


a bitter truth

by mindelan



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Both Thinking the Other is Dead, F/M, Fix-It of Sorts, Hurt/Comfort, Love Confessions, Major Character Injury, Mutual Pining, Recovery, Sharing a Bed, Slow Burn, Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies, Torture, in this rebellion we sit down and talk about our feelings!!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-22
Updated: 2017-12-14
Packaged: 2019-01-21 10:41:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 40,477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12455892
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mindelan/pseuds/mindelan
Summary: After falling to the bottom of the data tower, Cassian takes too long to climb back up. When he gets to the top, Jyn is long gone, trapped a Star Destroyer flying miles and miles away from Scarif. This leaves Cassian to be rescued by the Alliance, Jyn to be taken by the Empire, and for both of them to believe that the other is dead.Even once Jyn and Cassian are reunited, both come to the conclusion that surviving is difficult for people like them. Their jagged edges don't quite match up how they should, and their traumas run far deeper than just the events in the week leading up to Scarif. But that's not to say that even the most broken things cannot be mended.





	1. Chapter 1

It should have happened like this:

Jyn faces off with Krennic, eyes narrowed, teeth bared. She tells him that she is Galen and Lyra’s daughter, that she is the one who’s going to transmit the plans to his precious Death Star to the Rebellion.

He tells her that she’s lost.

It should have happened like this:

Just as Krennic moves to shoot her and Jyn gets ready to charge, Krennic falls at her feet with a hole in his chest. And there stands Cassian, against all the odds, with a smoking blaster in his hands.

In that moment, Jyn thinks he’s the most beautiful sight she’s ever seen.

It should have happened like this:

Together, they transmit the plans. Together, they limp off the data tower and into the elevator. Cassian asks her if she thinks anyone’s listening and she replies yes, someone has to be. She refuses to think that this whole suicide mission has been in vain.

They fall on the beach together, embracing for the first and last time. She holds Cassian as tightly as she’s able to and he does the same, taking comfort in human contact. Maybe in a different life, they could have been something other than partners.

The Death Star fires. She watches the wave of fire get closer and closer, and in this moment, she’s not afraid to die. When the blast hits them, it’s only a few seconds of agony before they’re turned into stardust together.

In a better world, they die together on Scarif.

 

Instead, it happens like this:

Cassian doesn’t come for her. He leaves her alone at the top of the data tower.

She hadn’t expected him to, but a small part of her had assumed he would. Especially after he did on Jedha and Eadu, and especially after he had rallied almost all of the members of Rogue One. The pain of his absence stings sharper than it should, but Jyn’s used to people abandoning her by now.

Maybe he’s given up on her. Maybe he’s run into some trouble and he’s on his way. Or maybe he’s dying alone at the bottom of the tower, unable to move and hoping that she’s able to finish the mission alone?

( _does that mean she’s the last person left standing? that she’s killed everyone else on this little suicide mission of hers, all in the name of a rebellion she barely believes in?)_

It doesn’t matter. She can’t afford to think about these things right now.Cassian isn’t here, but when she turns around to transmit the plans, the man in white is. He looks the same as he did all those years ago when he took her father and killed her mother right in front of her.

In this moment, all Jyn feels is rage. She doesn’t think about Cassian. Instead, she thinks about surviving, with her fists clenched and ready for a fight.

( _in a better world, this would be different. cassian would be there with her._ _though is it really a better world if they all die at the end?_

 _at least then they were together, even in death._ )

Jyn charges him before Krennic even realizes she’s moving, but as she tackles him to the ground, red hot fire laces through her gut. While he hits the floor, she hits it harder, wheezing and wrapping an arm around her torso. Her hand comes away sticky with blood.

_it hurts it hurts it hurts._

She tries to hoist herself up but fails, reaching up for the guard rails. Her bad leg, already hurt before coming up here, crumples beneath her. Krennic gets up before she can and aims the blaster at head. She freezes, eyes locked on his.

“My, my,” he tsks, giving her a once-over. His mouth twists in displeasure at the state she’s in, all broken and bloody. “I should have known that Lyra’s daughter would have so much _fire._ ”

 _The plans_ , she thinks desperately, trying once again to get on her feet. But it’s so hard. Her insides feel as if they’re going to fall out but she needs to get up and she needs to transmit the plans to the Rebellion.

“Don’t even bother with that. You’ve lost, Miss Erso,” Krennic smiles, and she wishes she had enough strength to punch that smug look off of his face. “You’re coming with me. After all, we do need information about your little Rebellion and this is the perfect opportunity.”

Her stomach is on fire and there’s blood in her mouth and she can barely think straight, her vision darkening, but if there’s one thing that Jyn’s always been, it’s rebellious.

As a Star Destroyer appears in the corner of her tunneling vision, Krennic turns ever so slightly to watch its arrival. Jyn takes that moment of distraction to use all of her remaining strength and grab the small vibroblade she had shoved in her thigh holster during the flight. Saw had taught her that there’s no such thing as too many weapons.

When Krennic turns back to her, she lunges upward and stabs him in the thigh, digging the blade as deeply as she can.

It’s not enough to kill him, but she feels a grim satisfaction watching him curse in pain as blood trickles down her leg. She falls backward, suddenly exhausted and her head hits the floor with a dull thud. Her heart is pounding quickly enough that she thinks it might explode and the wound in her gut pulses in time with her heartbeat.

Even in the light of her small victory, she can’t find it in herself to feel anything except guilt. She’s failed. The plans haven’t been transmitted, Cassian and the rest of her crew is dead or dying, and she’s about to die at the same hands that killed her mother and father.

“You _bitch!_ ” Krennic snarls. He rips the blade out of his thigh and tosses to the side. Jyn watches it fall off the data tower until she can’t see it anymore. When she turns back, Krennic has one hand over the wound in his thigh and the other is pointing the blaster back at her head again. “You’ll pay for that.”

Jyn grins, teeth bloody. “Fuck. . .you,” she wheezes in a final act of defiance, before Krennic’s eyes darken and his blaster cracks across her forehead.

_I’m sorry, Papa. We’ve lost and you’ve died for nothing. I failed you._

When the darkness comes to take her, Jyn Erso welcomes it with open arms.

 

It should have happened like this:

Cassian climbs the data tower just in time to save Jyn from Krennic.

Instead, it goes like this:

Cassian lays gasping on the cold, metal ground. Every breath burns in his lungs and there’s a coppery taste in the back of his mouth. Hot blood leaks out of his shoulder where Krennic shot him and there’s something wrong with his back. His leg hurts too and he hopes that it’s nothing more than a sprain. He can’t afford it to be anything worse.

At this moment, lying at the bottom of the data tower and staring upwards, there’s nothing he wants to do more than just lay here and die.

But he needs to get to Jyn. He promised himself that he wouldn’t leave her behind. He promised himself that he wouldn’t abandon her like her mother or father or Saw had.

( _he’s only known her for a week but jyn erso compels him in ways he never knew possible._ )

He forces himself to a sitting position, crying out when something in his back shifts. When he coughs, blood stains his teeth and he knows that he doesn’t have much time left.

_Get up. The mission isn’t over yet._

It feels like forever before he drags himself to his feet, leaning heavily on the data tower. His ribs ache with every movement and it’s a far way to climb, but he has to try. He can’t rest until he’s completed the mission, and as far as he knows, it’s not over yet.

He places his other hand on the archives and tries to pull himself up. This sudden movement jars his battered body so badly that he loses his grip and falls back to the ground with a stifled moan, unwelcome tears pooling in his eyes.

_it hurts it hurts it hurts_

“Come. . .on,” he grits out, forcing himself to his feet once again. He so badly wants to give up but he knows that he can’t. There’s more at stake here than what he wants. The Rebellion needs him. “Come _on!_ ”

Slowly, almost pitifully, Cassian climbs the data tower. At one point, he almost falls -- his hands are too slick with his blood and his head is spinning so fast that he thinks he’s going to pass out, but he digs his fingers into the handhold and rests his forehead against the tower, waiting for it to pass. When he gets the dizziness in check, he keeps going.

At this point, stopping isn’t even an option for him anymore.

When he pulls himself up to the top, barely conscious, Jyn is gone. She didn’t make it and it’s all his fault. If only he had been faster, if only he had shot Krennic before he had shot him --

 _Stop._ The mission. He needs to focus on the mission. He can mourn Jyn later, if he survives all of this.

( _by the way he’s feeling right now, the chance of that is slim._ )

He stumbles to the console. Everything’s all set up for him -- all he has to do is pull the lever. She’s done everything else for him. Cassian laughs quietly, though sounds more like a wheeze. Leave it to Jyn to do all of the hard work. He lets his fingers rest on the lever before pulling it down as hard as he can.

_Thank you, Jyn. I’m sorry._

When the screen lights up and the plans begin transmitting, he slides down the console to rest, sticking his bad leg out in front of him. His job is done now. The mission is over. Finally, he can sleep. He thinks that after all he’s done, he deserves a couple moments of peace.

Just as his head drifts forward and his vision darkens, hands start shaking his shoulders. Blearily, he tries to swat them away but finds that he can’t move his arms anymore. This would bother him if he didn’t feel so tired.

“Captain Andor! You need to stay awake!”

 _It’s done_ , he wants to tell whoever is shaking him, but he can’t seem to make his throat work properly. _Let me rest. I’ve completed the mission. We did it. Please, just let me rest._

The last thing Cassian Andor feels before fading into unconsciousness is two arms pulling him upwards, and a sharp pain. Then -- _nothing._

 

Jyn wakes up bound to a chair.

She thinks that she must still be in the Star Destroyer because she can just barely hear the vibrations of the ship through the floor. She can’t see much in the room that she’s trapped in, but she knows that she still must be in the hands of the Empire. After all, it’s very unlikely that the Rebellion would tie her up after she _tried_ to save their asses.

( _but she doesn’t know. she’s not even a member of the alliance, not to mention that she took some of their best operatives and went rogue, killing all of them on what was supposed to be a win for the rebellion.)_

The blaster wound on her stomach is hastily bandaged, but there’s blood leaking through the bacta patch. Her captors haven’t done anything for her leg, but she doesn’t think it’s anything worse than a sprained ankle. Her head is what worries her the most; she can feel dried blood crusted on her cheek and her forehead throbs in time with her heartbeat. Every so often, her vision goes dark and she has to swallow down a wave of nausea.

How the hell is she going to get out of here with a concussion?

Weakly, she tugs on the binders around her wrists. They’re notched one slot too small and are digging uncomfortably into her skin. To get out of this, she’s thinks she’s going to have to break her thumb _and_ dislocate her shoulder, but the very thought of that makes her head spin.

The door to her dimly-lit cell opens before she can think too much about it. Light floods in, making her head explode in pain, and she has to close her eyes until the door shuts once more. When she looks up, Krennic stands in front of her, with two guards flanking him. There isn’t an IT-O droid with them and at that small mercy, Jyn lets out a small sigh of relief.

“You’re finally awake, I see,” Krennic says, taking a step closer to her. He doesn’t limp and there’s no sign of the wound on his leg -- she know that the Empire has more bacta than the Rebellion ever will. At least now that supply has been slightly depleted because of her actions. “I thought we might lose you. And we can’t have that, now can we? You’re the last surviving Erso.”

She says silent, appraising him the same way he’s looking her over. She takes note of the blaster strapped to his hip and the dark bags under his eyes. She doesn’t know how long she’s been out, but it doesn’t look like he’s slept since before Scarif.

Krennic doesn’t seem perturbed by her silence. In fact, he keeps talking. “You know, we’ve been trying to find you for years. You’re extremely good at hiding, Miss Erso. I’m sure you imagine my surprise when you revealed yourself on the data tower. Just where have you been all these years?”

“Hiding from you,” she spits, leaning forward to get as close to him as possible. Her wrists scream as she strains on the bindings. “What, did you think I would just come out and let you take me prisoner? You’re a lot dumber than I thought you were, Krennic.” A slow smile crosses his face at that. Jyn doesn’t like the look of it. “Maybe if you had, your father wouldn’t be dead right now. He died on Eadu. Did you know that, Miss Erso? Your precious Rebellion killed him with their bombs.”

The pain of her father’s loss hits her all over again, like a sharp knife driven right through her heart. She hasn’t had the time to properly mourn him since the battle on Eadu and she has to close her eyes to ward off the grief.

She failed him on Scarif.

“In fact, now that I think about it, I’ve knew you father better than you ever did,” he muses, jolting Jyn back out of her thoughts. “We met a long time ago. Shame you didn’t get to know Galen better. He really was a good man. Well -- at least, if you excuse the flaw he built into my machine.”

“What do you want?” Jyn snarls, sick of this idle conversation. She knows the answer to her question, but she doesn’t want to talk about her father with the man who took him away from her all of those years ago. He doesn’t deserve to have known him better than her. “What the hell do you want from me?”

Krennic doesn’t bat an eye at the change in conversation. “Information. You tell me what you know about the Rebellion and I’ll let you die quickly. If not, well.” He shrugs, then folds his hands in front of him. “I think you know what happens then.”

She does, in fact, know what happens. This isn't her first interrogation.

“Come on, then,” Jyn bares her teeth, slightly feral. Adrenaline courses through her veins. They both know she’s not going to talk. “Let’s see what the Empire’s got.”

Krennic returns her smile, though it’s full of malice. He motions to the two guards behind him to move forward. “Then let’s begin.”

 

Cassian wakes to the sound of beeping.

His eyes fly open of their own accord and he’s met with the blurry sight of a pristine white ceiling and a woman sitting next to him.

It can’t be. It’s impossible. And yet --

_“Jyn?”_

“Captain Andor,” the woman replies and he blinks, trying to focus his vision. Her accent isn’t anything like Jyn’s crisp Coruscanti one. “It’s good to see that you’re finally awake.”

“Your highness,” he croaks, finally recognizing the figure in front of him. The last he heard, Leia had been on Alderaan with her parents. For some reason, she’s here, sitting at his bedside. Her outward appearance is immaculate, like always, but the dark circles under her eyes tell a different story. “What. . .?”

_What happened?_

Somehow, he’s back on Yavin 4. His hair is damp with what he assumes is bacta. While he’s still in a considerable amount of pain, it’s much less than it had been on Scarif. Someone must have rescued him and taken him back here.

“One of our pilots noticed you on top of the tower before the Death Star fired,” Leia twists her hands in her lap but keeps her chin up high. He can tell that something’s bothering her. “Do you remember anything else that happened on Scarif?”

He remembers too much. Losing K-2SO, falling off the data tower, transmitting the plans. And -- Jyn. The sting of both of their deaths is too strong for him to deal with right now, so he locks those memories away, pushes them to the very back of his mind.

But he doesn’t remember the Death Star firing. If Jyn had been alive on Scarif before that, then there’s no way in hell she survived the blast.

( _he should have been the one to die. with everything he’s done, he knows that he deserves it._ )

“The plans,” he rasps instead, sitting up as much as he’s able to and watching her face. He needs to know. “Did you get the plans?” Leia nods, and a small, sad smile crosses her face. She doesn’t look as happy as she should. “The Death Star was destroyed hours ago.”

At that, Cassian falls back and closes his eyes. They did it. They got the plans. All of those deaths -- Jyn’s death -- those hadn’t been in vain. But despite the relief that’s bubbling up in his chest, he can’t quite tamper down the guilt.

He’s the only survivor. He’s alone.

“We’re being to evacuate the base. You’ll be on one of the first transports out of here. Get some rest, Captain; you deserve it.”

As she leaves, he feels as if there’s something she isn’t telling him. But a medical droid is at his bedside and he’s feeling too tired now to call out to her and ask about it.

 

The next time Krennic comes back to her cell, he brings an IT-O droid with him. This is when Jyn finds out that the Rebellion has destroyed the Death Star.

And even though the droid is injecting something in her neck that makes her blood feel as if it’s boiling and there’s a big part of her that wishes she died back on Scarif, she laughs. When he asks her where the rebels are going now and backhands her across the face, all Jyn can do is laugh.

They did it. Somehow, they did it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so this idea popped in my head a couple days ago and i'm like why not it's not like i write a lot of angst or anything! (jk all i can seem to write it angst)
> 
> the update schedule is going to be whenever i have time to write the next chapter. i'm in college currently so that's busy, but hopefully this will be finished before 2017 is over! i have six weeks off at thanksgiving so fingers crossed. but i'm sure i'll be able to post a couple updates before than.
> 
> anyway, i hope you enjoyed reading! comments, both positive and negative, are extremely appreciated.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warning for torture all throughout the chapter!

The second time Cassian wakes, he notices that he’s on a ship before he even opens his eyes. He can feel the hum of the engine through the floor and realizes that this must be the transport off of Yavin 4 that Leia had mentioned the last time he was awake.

He wonders, briefly, where they’re going. He doesn’t think anyone will tell him, not after he went rogue, but he hopes it’s somewhere drastically different than Yavin. Cold, maybe. He’ll be happy with a frozen wasteland. Anything would be better than a planet with a similar climate with Yavin -- he knows better than anyone how even the smallest things can trigger buried memories.

There are too many things that happened on Yavin 4 that he doesn’t want to remember.

And then his thoughts drift as to what his punishment could be. After all, he did follow the lead of a criminal and take about thirty of the Alliance’s best men on a suicide mission that ended up with almost all of them being dead.

( _not that he’ll say that, of course. he’ll assume full responsibility for the mission. jyn’s dead. the least he can do is try to take the blame off of her name, whatever good that’ll do._ )

He figures they’ll demote him. If the Rebellion had wanted to kick him out, they wouldn’t have given him medical treatment and taken him with them to wherever they’re going. It doesn’t bother him. All he wants to do is help the Alliance -- he’s dedicated his life to it. It doesn’t matter how he helps so long that he is.

He takes stock of his injuries. The aches and pains that had been persistent the first time he had woken up are no longer there and he feels almost like he’s floating. Most of his body is numb.

The second thing he notices is that he can’t feel his legs.

He can’t move them. For a spy, this realization comes later than it should and panics him considerably more than the first one does. What good a soldier than can’t walk?

As soon as his heart rate monitor spikes, a nurse is at his side. “Breathe, Captain,” the woman urges, leaning over him. She purposefully becomes the only thing in his line of sight and he tries to focus on her face but his eyes are moving too wildly for that. “You need to take deep breaths, okay? Can you do that for me?”

“My legs -- “ he gasps out. His head is spinning and there are black spots dancing in front of his vision. A very small voice in the back of his mind tells him that he needs to calm down or else he’s going to pass out. “I can’t -- I can’t feel my _legs_ \-- “

“Your legs are fine, Captain Andor,” the nurse soothes, cupping his face in her hands. He tries to meet her gaze, but his eyes can’t seem to stay in one place for very long. “You’re under heavy medication and they’re bandaged pretty tightly, but as far as we can tell, they’re going to be fine. I’m going to give you something to help you calm down, okay?”

“I -- “ His breath is still coming in sharp gaps, but knowing that he’s not paralyzed lifts a weight off of his shoulders. He doesn’t know what he would do if he couldn’t go out in the field -- he’s spent his whole life in Intelligence and doesn’t think that he knows how to do anything else. “I can’t -- “

“It’ll be okay,” she says softly, switching out one of the bags attached to an IV. Vaguely, he realizes she’s drugging him, but doesn’t care enough to say anything. Calm washes over him almost immediately, and he closes his eyes in contentment. “You’ll be okay.”

As Cassian drifts off into sleep, he hopes that she’s right.

( _but the rational part of him knows that she isn’t._ )

 

Lying on the dirty, dark floor of her cell with one hand wrapped around her stomach as if to keep her guts inside of her, all Jyn wants is a hot shower.

She can endure the torture. The eight years she spent with Saw and the seven she spent on her own left her with both abandonment issues and an extremely high pain tolerance. But all she really wants is to get clean -- her hair is lanky and full of grease, and the blood staining her skin won’t go away no matter how hard she scrubs and claws and scratches.

No matter what she does, it doesn’t go away.

( _all of those people died on scarif because of her._ )

While her intestines are no longer in danger of falling out of her, the wound on her stomach is hot to the touch. She knows that it’s most likely infected but there’s nothing she can do about that. Her leg aches. She realized days ago that it’s probably more than a sprain, since she can barely put her weight on it. The only good thing about her situation (if there is a good thing) is that her head has stopped pounding. Now, it’s only a dull throb. She’s not so stupid to believe the concussion has gone away, however.

If she wants bacta patches and the torture to stop, she needs to give Krennic the information he wants about the Rebellion. Jyn knows it’s in her best interest to just tell him what she knows. But for some reason, she can’t make herself talk.

She doesn’t know why, exactly. She owes the Alliance nothing, not after they killed her father and refused to go to Scarif. She can only imagine how much better the mission would have been with the Council’s support. Cassian, Baze, Bodhi, Chirrut -- they could all be alive.

The thought of that makes her hands clench into fists. Everyone she’s ever cared about -- or potentially could have cared about -- has abandoned her. By choice or not, it doesn’t matter; they’re still gone. Her mother is dead. Her father is dead. Saw is dead. Rogue One is dead.

Why the fuck should she care about their secrets when they hadn’t given a fuck about her?

She doesn’t know. She doesn’t know why her mouth stays shut whenever the IT-O droid injects her with yet another painful concoction or when Krennic orders his guards to take turns beating her. It’s certainly not doing her any favors.

She’s never cared before. Never had the luxury for political opinions.

Why does it matter so much to her that she stays silent?

( _deep down, she thinks that maybe she’s tired of not looking up. she’s tired of running. cassian had welcomed her home on yavin 4. at the very least, she’s protecting the rebellion in his memory._

_he had believed in her. it’s time she does something for him.)_

 

There are no survivors from the original group that went to Scarif. No survivors of the original Rogue One.

( _it doesn’t surprise him. it shouldn’t._ )

Most of the pilots and calvary that came after them lived, but he doesn’t know specifics. But out of everyone there, nobody comes to visit him.

The ones who are in medical beds like he is don’t make eye contact. The ones who lost a family member or friend on the suicide mission shoot him dirty looks.

Cassian doesn’t meet any of their gazes and pretends to be asleep.

 

Out of all of the people on the Star Destroyer, Jyn only knows one name: Krennic.

The other guards are faceless, unknown beings. She knows which ones like to hurt her and which ones hold back on their punches. She can tell which ones agree wholeheartedly with the Empire’s propaganda and which ones are uncertain, unsure.

But what she doesn’t know is their names or their life stories or where they came from. For all she knows, there could be dozens of potential defectors on this Star Destroyer. There could be people like Bodhi, just trying to earn a couple extra credits to feed their family or people who had no choice but to conscript or die trying to rebel.

It shouldn’t bother her. It doesn’t. After all, it’ll be much easier to kill all of these guards when she finally gets out of here if she doesn’t know anything about them.

They’ll just be another stain on her already crimson hands. It’s not like she’ll even notice the extra blood, not with all of the lives she’s already taken.

 

The healing process is slow. 

Cassian understands this, yes, but if he isn't allowed to get out of his bed and start walking around within the next few days, he's going to break out of the med bay himself, with or without permission.  

Everyday, the nurses come to check and recheck their work. They mutter amongst themselves, having conversations about his recovery that he's apparently not allowed to hear while he lies there, itching to get on his feet and actually _do_ something.

His legs don't hurt as much anymore and he can sit up in bed without assistance. But he knows they've been giving him a fuckton of pain medication and that's probably why he's been able to do as much as he has. 

"Your back is healing remarkably while, Captain Andor," one of the nurses remarks cheerfully. 

He scowls, despite the good news. "Well enough for me to start walking?"

The nurse tuts, fiddling with the machine next his bed. "Not today, certainly. Soon though. Maybe next week you can begin physical therapy and we'll see how that goes, hmm?" 

Cassian grits his teeth and stays silent, instead electing to close his eyes and feign sleep. 

It's hard to be idle, especially when he knows that the Rebellion needs him. He should be up in control, helping the Council make decisions or off-world somewhere, undercover and fighting the Empire, not stuck in a bed for Force only knows how long. The nurses won't even give him a datapad, claiming that any news could potentially hinder his recovery. 

That, Cassian thinks, is absolute and utter bullshit. They're not giving him any news because they've been instructed not to, mostly likely because the Rebellion is going to kick him out on his ass for the stunt he pulled on Scarif. 

He doesn't know how to be idle. He doesn't know how to rest or how to take a break and just _stop._  All his life he's been fighting and fighting and _fighting._  

This? He doesn't know what to do with this. How does one stop doing something when it's all they know how to do?

( _he wishes jyn were here. at least then he wouldn't feel so alone._ )

 

The healing process is slow. 

It'd be faster with a bacta tank, but Jyn takes what she can get. This morning with her breakfast, one of the guards had tossed in a roll of bandages, a single patch, and a bottle of pills. There isn't any label on the bottle, but she had taken some anyway. If Krennic had wanted to kill her, she knows that he'll do it himself. 

She takes the bandages and wraps them around her ankle with shaking hands. It doesn't hurt as much anymore, and she can just barely stand on it, but something's wrong. Whenever she walks, she limps. At least now it'll have some support. 

( _she doesn't think about how it's most likely a fracture healed wrong. doesn't think about how if it isn't treated soon, she'll be limping her whole life._ )

She uses the bacta patch on her stomach. It's stopped bleeding, but it's infected. She doesn't know if a patch will fix the issue, but it can't hurt. Already, she's feeling better from this morning, when she had woken up shaky and feverish. She suspects that the pills are antibiotics, then takes two more, just in case. 

She'd question the medicine given to her if she didn't know that Krennic is giving it to her to keep her alive longer. What good is a prisoner with enemy information when they've succumbed to their wounds?

If she wasn't so hellbent on revenge, then she doesn't think she would have let them treat her. At this point, her anger is the only thing keeping her alive. 

What else does she have to live for?

 

“Andor. Good to see you up and about.”

Draven is formal with him, as always, hands clasped behind his back as he watches Cassian struggle through physical therapy. It's been days since the nurses finally allowed him out of bed, but his legs are weak and still bandaged. It's going to take longer than a single session to get his strength back. Cassian notes the lack of rank and wonders if he’s been demoted already without his knowledge.

“General,” he says respectfully, with a slight nod in acknowledgement. He tries to keep his voice calm and collected, but he can’t quite keep the strain out of his tone as he hobbles around in a pair of crutches.

They look at each other in silence for a moment. Draven’s careful gaze calculates the shape that he’s currently in while Cassian stops and does his best to catch his breath silently. After a pause, Draven’s eyes meet his again. “You’ve recovered well from your injuries, I see.”

“I have, sir,” he responds, trying (and failing) to figure out Draven’s motives for visiting him. “The nurses tell me that I’ll be fit for duty in about a month, give or take.”

Draven waves his hand as if to shoot down that suggestion. This surprises Cassian. “Focus on getting better first, Andor. I can’t have my best agent compromised because he didn’t follow the doctor’s orders.”

“Sir?” Cassian questions, tilting his head ever so slightly to the side. Is saying that simply a way to soften the blow that he knows Draven will follow-up with? “I thought -- well, after Scarif -- “

Draven cuts him off before he can finish his thought. “That’s one of the reasons I came to talk to you. Even though you went rogue, you still managed to get the Death Star plans. You played a big role in its destruction. Many of the Rebellion’s people are praising the Rogue One team as heroes, right up there with Skywalker and Solo.”

“I wasn’t the only one,” Cassian is quick to add when Draven takes a breath. It doesn’t seem as if Rogue One will be condemned for their actions, but it’s not right for him to take all of the credit. “There were others too. Good men and women died on that beach.”

“And they will be remembered as heroes,” Draven placates. “It is because of this that the Council has decided to pretend that the mission to Scarif was sanctioned. The retrieval of the Death Star plans was a win for the Rebellion.”

Cassian pauses. “And that means what exactly, sir?”

“Well, for one thing, we can’t exactly punish a hero, now can we?” Draven replies with a wry smile. Cassian can’t tell if he’s happy or not with this decision; Draven always did have the best damn spy face in the business. “Once you’re done with medical leave, you’ll resume active duty in Intelligence. However, if you go rogue again, there will be severe consequences.”

“Understood, sir.” Cassian says evenly. Despite the relief that he should be feeling, his stomach churns. So many people were killed on Scarif, and here he is, alive and unpunished. It leaves a sour taste in the back of his mouth. “Thank you, sir.”

Draven holds up a hand. “There is another matter that I wish to discuss with you, Captain. The medical team, out of consideration of your poor health, restricted information from you during your recovery. They believed that it might interfere with your recovery.”

Cassian chooses to ignore Draven's straight-faced lie. He's almost positive that the only reason he hadn't been privy to any information is because the Alliance didn't know what the hell to do with him yet. 

( _he wasn't supposed to survive scarif. everybody knows that._ )

In waiting for Draven to continue, he remembers how haunted Leia had looked a couple days ago when she had visited him; that same look is in Draven’s eyes now. His stomach clenches.

“Destroying the Death Star was not without casualties,” Draven says finally, with a heavy sigh. “It fired on Alderaan before we could. The planet is. . .” he seems lost for words for a second, shifting his gaze. “The planet is gone. I’m sorry, Cassian.”

For a moment, Draven’s words don’t register. And then it clicks.

Cassian can’t breathe. His crutches clatter to the ground and he sags against the wall, barely standing upright. The blood is pounding so loudly in his ears that he doesn’t know if he heard Draven right. “The whole _planet?_ ”

“Yes.”

He swears in Festian, tearing his gaze away from Draven. He had known people on Alderaan and now they’re gone. They’re dead. They’re all _dead._

Cassian tries to keep his mask up, he really does. There’s no place for showing emotions like this in Intelligence and he’s sure that Draven won’t stand for it.

But to Cassian's surprise, even seeing through Cassian's mask like he always does, the General places a comforting hand on Cassian’s shoulder. At this small, insignificant touch, he breaks down almost immediately.

Cassian can’t remember the last time he cried. But standing here in the medical bay with the closest person he’s had to a father for the past twenty years, he can't keep the tears at bay.

 

When Krennic returns, his two guards hoist her up by her armpits, just high enough so her feet skim the ground. She lets them, and steels her jaw, ready for the beating she knows she’s about to receive. Instead, one of them injects a stimshot into her neck. 

She blinks rapidly, shaking her head slightly. The pain she's been enduring is suddenly pushed to the very back of her mind. With a razor sharp gaze, she focuses all of her attention on her guards as they carry her out into the hallway. They know by now that she's not going to walk on her own, so they don't even bother pushing and prodding her forward. 

She's their prisoner, after all. Why should she make it easier for them?

“Where are we going?” Jyn demands, as if she’s in any position to be making demands right now.

Krennic hums. She doesn’t like the look on his face. “You’ll see.”

Instead of dwelling on his ominous statement, she takes the time observe her surroundings. The prison block that she’s in is fairly small, with only about twenty other cells in the area. There’s two doors at the end of the hall, but the device on the wall next to them tells her that she’s going to need to steal a keycard if she wants to get out of here.

Currently, her plan of action is to ambush the guards when they come to bring her meals. She has to lure them into her cell somehow, and then neutralize and take their armor. But with each passing day, especially considering her current physical state, her plan seems more and more unlikely.

But she’s not going to rot in this kriffing prison for Force only knows how many years. She’s going to escape or die trying.

They stop in front of another unmarked cell, although it’s much bigger than hers. She’s about to complain about her lack of space (her mother always told her that her mouth would get her in trouble) until she sees what’s inside.

There’s a boy, not much younger than her strapped to a chair in the middle of the room. She doesn’t recognize him, but she doesn’t expect to. He’s barely conscious, eyelids fluttering with the effort in staying awake. A guard stands behind the chair, clearly in the middle of an interrogation. But what makes her mouth go dry is the amount of blood pooled on the floor and splattered on the walls.

“Miss Erso,” Krennic says cordially, as if he’s introducing her to a friend and not someone who’s almost dead, “meet Private Cado Dravvad. Rebel Intelligence.”

“What’s going on?” Jyn hisses through her teeth, straining at the guard’s hold on her. “Why have you brought me here?”

Instead of answering her questions, Krennic walks over to the boy and pulls his head up roughly from where it’s lying on his chest. Cado groans in pain, and the sound makes Jyn flinch.

“I need answers,” Krennic says finally. “And you’re not giving them to me. It doesn’t look like you will either.”

“Like hell I’m not.”

Krennic inclines his head in agreement. “We picked up Private Dravvad here two days ago. So far, he hasn’t given us any information either. So,” Krennic motions to the guard hiding in the shadows of the cell to come forward, “if you don’t talk, then the private here is going to pay for that.”

Jyn clenches her jaw and tries to look away, but one of the guards jerks her face forward so she has to watch. She’s seen this kind of thing dozens of times under Saw’s care, but has never experienced it herself.

( _the kid looks so small sitting on that chair._ _there’s still baby fat on his face, he can’t be older than twenty. and now he’s going to feel the weight of all of her crimes against the empire.)_

“Miss Erso, can you tell me where the Rebellion’s headquarters are located?”

“Don’t -- “ Cado croaks, but the guard backhands him across the face. Cado’s head snaps to the side and blood trickles out of his nose.

“How old are you?” she asks instead, directing the question at Cado. She meets his gaze and tries to soften her eyes. _It’s okay,_ she tries to convey. _It’s going to be okay._

“I’m uh -- “ he pauses to spit blood out of his mouth. “I’m eighteen, miss.”

“You’re just a kid,” Jyn whispers, even though she had been much younger when she started. He must have been recently conscripted. “Krennic, he’s just a _kid_.”

She knows that Cassian conscripted at a young age. Now, she sees him in that chair instead of Cado, young and broken and bloody. Her stomach rolls and bile rises up in her throat. This isn’t right,  _this isn't right._

“He’s a rebel,” he replies, and then guard slices off one of Cado’s fingers.

“Private Cado Dravvad. Seven-four-five-six-six-four. Private Cado Dravvad. _Fuck_ \-- seven-f-four. . .seven-four-five. . .six-six-four. . .”

“Are you going to answer my first question or is the private here going to lose another finger?”

“Don’t do this,” she pleads, her mask of indifference shattering in the face of a young kid who’s being tortured in her place. “This isn’t his fight and you know it. Please.”

“Answer the question.”

"I don't know!" she cries out, trying to break free. "They didn't tell me anything about where they were going.  _I don't know where they are!"_

Krennic taps his chin, as if he's considering her answer for the hundredth time she's told him. "Not good enough." _  
_

This time, the guard cuts off two of the boy’s fingers and the resulting scream is something she knows is going to be repeating in her head for days after.

“Seven-four-five. . .six-six-four.”

“Do try and cooperate, Miss Erso. Private Dravvad only has so many fingers.”

Jyn bites down on her tongue and coppery taste of blood fills her mouth. “Where are you from, Cado?”

“Coruscant,” he rasps back with a small smile, even in the face of torture. “Used t’ live in the. . .the slums though. . .”

“I lived there too, when I was very young,” she replies softly, trying to blink away tears. It’s useless -- they fall anyway. “I don’t remember much of it.”

“I’ll show. . .you around if -- _Fuck!_ ” The guard cuts off his remaining fingers on his left hand and Cado swears violently, tears streaming down his face too. Blood squirts out of the wounds, a steady drip adding to the pools below him.

“My patience is wearing thin, Jyn,” Krennic says evenly. The guard wipes the blood off of the vibroblade on the material of his pants and holds it to the boy’s throat. Jyn’s heart constricts. “Will you cooperate or not?”

Jyn knows what's coming next.

"I don't think it hurts much," she murmurs, trying to soothe. Cado's scared eyes dart to hers and she forces a smile. All of the fight leaving her body in a heavy breath. Her gazes takes in his appearance, trying to remember his face. "It'll be okay. I promise." 

“I know what -- what I signed up. . .for, miss,” he says softly.

“ _Enough!_ ” Krennic yells, then snatches the blade out of the guard’s grip and cuts Cado’s throat himself.

Jyn collapses. If it weren’t for the guard’s strong grip, she would have fallen to the floor. The effects of the stim are slowly wearing off, but the brunt of her pain hits her like a wave. Her leg aches, her stomach hurts, her head spins. And even though there's nothing wrong with her chest, her heart clenches as she watches Cado die. 

She watches Cado’s life leave his eyes and watches the blood flow out of his neck. It’s getting his uniform dirty; she knows that bloodstains are difficult to get out of clothing. Briefly, momentarily, she wonders how he's going to get his clothes clean. 

Krennic motions for the guards to take her out of the room. She notices the lack of blood staining his white uniform. It’s pristine and clean as always. “Reflect on this. His death is on your conscience now. I hope that you’ll be more cooperative in a couple of hours.”

“I _hate_ you,” she snaps suddenly, all of her fire returning. Her jaw hardens and her eyes flash. “You’ll pay for this. _I’ll_ make you pay.”

“Don’t make promises you can’t keep, Miss Erso,” he chides as his guards drag her back to her cell. They unceremoniously throw her in and she lands in a heap, gasping in pain, but doesn’t bother to get on her feet. It hurts too much to move.

When she hears the guards leave her, she curls up even tighter and sobs for a boy who will never see twenty.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and here it is, a day earlier than planned too! i hope y'all enjoy it. i know it's super dark, but it can only get better from here, right? i think you'll really like what i've got planned for the next chapter. ;-)


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> BEFORE YOU READ
> 
> AS OF OCTOBER 31ST 2017 CHAPTER TWO HAS BEEN EDITED/ADDED TO! summersrage was kind enough to let me know last chapter that my timeline was a bit off, so i added about 1.4k words to the last chapter to make everything a bit more clear. definitely read that before this chapter. if you're a new reader after halloween, then everything is up to date.

“It’s quite clear that nothing that I do is working–“

“Oh, took you this long to notice it, did it?”

Krennic continues on as if Jyn didn’t interrupt him. Her head is spinning and the dim lighting in her cell suddenly seems brighter than it’s ever been. She has to squint her eyes just to see him standing in front of her. “Lord Vader has decided that I am not, ahem, _capable_ to getting information from you–“

“You needed Vader to tell you that?” Jyn laughs, throwing an arm over her eyes from where she’s propped up against the wall. Eventually, her laugh turns into a rasping cough. At least this time she doesn’t throw up blood.

“Miss Erso, _please_ –” Krennic tries again, clearly frustrated. Jyn doesn’t care–she’s the one locked up and getting tortured every day, not him.

“It’s Jyn,” she mutters. Why does her head hurt so much all of the sudden? It feels as if it’s going to explode. “You’ve been kriffing torturing me for weeks. We should be on a first name basis, Orson. So call me  _Jyn_ , yeah?”

“I am  _done!_ ” he snarls, bending down to meet her gaze. Jyn removes her arm from her face to look him in the eyes, but other than that, doesn’t react. “This Star Destroyer is en route to Coruscant. Lord Vader wants to interrogate you himself.”

“You’re giving me visitation rights now?”

After that quip, Krennic swoops down and grabs her by the throat. He lifts her almost completely off the ground with one hand around her neck. Jyn’s hands feebly scrabble for purchase, trying to claw her way out of his grip, but he doesn’t relent.

“For Galen’s sake, I offered you an easy way out. I would have let you _live_ , do you understand me? Even after what he did, I still would have shown you mercy in his memory. You chose this, Miss Erso. _You_ did. This whole situation you’ve gotten yourself stuck in?” He waves free hand in the air with a sniff of disgust. “All of this is your fault.”

“Don’t–“ she rasps, black spots dancing in front of her vision. She can’t die, not now, not when Krennic is still alive–

“Oh, I’m sorry, did you have something to say?” He taunts, tightening his grip around her throat. “Spit it out, _Jyn_.”

Jyn wheezes. Her back arches as she tries in vain to pull his hand from her throat, but he doesn’t let go until she’s almost unconscious. She scrambles backwards, panting for breath. One hand flies up to her throat, the other to her necklace.

“Don’t–“ she manages, then stops in a coughing fit. Once the coughs subside, she wipes her mouth and continues on, glaring. “Don’t talk about. . .my father.”

“Who, Galen?” he mocks, crossing his arms across his chest. “Does that bother you, Jyn? That I knew and loved your father more than you ever did?”

“You _killed_ him!” she shouts, but it comes out as a strangled gasp. It sets her off into another coughing fit. This time, the coppery taste of blood fills her mouth. “If you hadn’t. . .come to Lah’mu all of those years ago, he would. . .he would still be alive!”

Krennic laughs, but there’s nothing humorous about the situation. The sound bounces off the concrete walls of her cell, making it sound louder than it really is. When he speaks again, she flinches at the harshness in his voice, “The Rebellion killed your father. And you, being a part of that organization, played a part in his murder.” He looks down at her fondly, but she knows he’s remembering Galen and not seeing her. “I _never_ would have harmed the man I loved.”

“You killed my mother,” she says coolly. “And then you took him away from his family, locked him up, and forced him to build your machine. If that’s your idea of love, then you’re a sick fuck. My father would have never loved a man like _you._ ”

He loved Lyra, the almost Jedi, the geologist. He loved her, his Stardust. And from what she can remember, he loved Lah’mu too. Even though he never had been good at farming, Jyn thinks he loved it because they were all together as a family.

( _she had loved it too._ )

Apparently done with their conversation, Krennic turns on his heel and leaves the cell. Jyn smiles grimly in having the last word until he calls over his shoulder, “Lord Vader will not be as kind as I have been. Do remember that, Jyn.”

The sick feeling returns to her stomach, but this time she knows it’s not from the concussion. No one she’s ever heard of has gone through an interrogation with Vader and made it out wholly intact.

She’ll just have to kill Krennic before the week is up.

 

Hoth is, in almost every possible way, different from Yavin 4. It’s cold, barely hospitable, and makes all of his old injuries ache. Still, it’s preferable from the heat of Yavin. Fest is a freezing planet; he’s used to this kind of temperature.

( _he’s_ _used to being alone too. he had lead a team for about a week before he went and got them all killed._ )

He hasn’t exactly been cleared from the medical bay, but he can walk well enough using crutches, which is, in his mind, a good enough reason to leave. After the final surgery on his back three days ago, the nurses had took the last of the bandages off and told him that he should be on bed rest for another day or two to make sure he recovered fully.

Cassian had rested for about two hours before making a break for it. So far, no one has come to drag him back to his bed yet. (Once they did, however, he’d be going straight back to medical. He doesn’t move very fast on crutches–there’s no way he could slip past them.)

He stands in the back of the hangar, watching the pilots fly in and out. Not many people are looking too closely at him; they’re all caught up in their own business. The ones who do don’t say anything and continue on their way–he’s still a captain and in some people’s eyes, a hero.

( _the looks he gets from the others, the looks from those who lost someone on scarif, he makes sure to meet their gaze to share the burden.)_

“Captain Andor!” Someone in a bright orange flight suit comes jogging over in his direction. So much for being unapproachable. “I’ve been looking for you!”

Cassian sighs, but straightens his back. If it weren’t for his crutches, he’d be in a snappy salute right now, though he doubts Skywalker cares about such formalities. “Commander Skywalker.”

The kid–despite only being a decade older at most, Cassian can’t help but think of him as such–frowns slightly at the title. Cassian notes the sweat beading his forehead and the helmet tucked underneath his arm. He suspects he’s come straight from a mission, which is confirmed when his beeping astromech droid rounds the corner.

“Not now, R2!” Skywalker chides, then turns back to Cassian. “It’s Luke, please. I’m new to this whole Rebellion thing. I’m not really the commander-type.”

“You’re the one who blew up the Death Star. That has to count for something, hmm?” Cassian remarks drily, a small smile tugging the corner of his lips despite himself. He can’t remember a time where he was as young and naive as the kid in front of him.

( _he’s been in this fight since he was six years old. there was no time for him to be a child._ )

“Yeah, well,” Skywalker replies, clearly flustered. He rubs the back of his neck as a pink hue tints his cheeks. “ _You_ were the one who got the plans for it in the first place. It’s not like I could have done it without you.”

“I didn’t do it alone,” Cassian says softly. For a moment, both of them are silent, and Cassian takes the time to remember the people who didn’t make it off Scarif. _Kay, Bodhi, Chirrut, Baze, Tonc, Melshi. Jyn._

When he glances back at Skywalker, the kid’s got a thoughtful look on his face. Cassian wonders who Skywalker’s lost. There isn’t anyone in the Rebellion who hasn’t experienced sacrifice in some form or another.

“Anyway, I didn’t think you’d be out of the med bay so soon,” Skywalker says suddenly, looking Cassian up and down. “Senator Mothma comm-ed me on my way in and said to grab a wheelchair and to bring you to command before I went to my debrief. Are you even supposed to be out of bed?”

Cassian’s already moving before Skywalker finishes his statement. The kid rushes to catch up with him, though he’s not going very fast on his crutches. The astromech trills, following behind them. “Wait, if she said to bring a wheelchair, you probably shouldn’t–”

“What did she say, exactly?”

“I don’t know–here, let me help you–something about a Dameron? Kes, maybe? I don’t know him.”

“I’m fine,” Cassian mutters, lurching away when Skywalker tries to support him. When Kes’s name is mentioned, Cassian’s heart leaps into his throat. “Are you sure that’s what she said?”

“No, I’m not sure!” Skywalker exclaims, but they’re already at the doors to command. “I already told you that.”

“Thanks for the escort, Commander. Luke,” Cassian says quickly, giving the kid a nod as he enters. He’d give a more formal goodbye if he had the time for it, but there isn’t any. He needs to know what Mothma has to say first.

Whatever she has to say, it can’t be good.

 

Hours later, Jyn’s fallen into a fitful sleep with one hand curled protectively around her throat when alarms start to go off.

Immediately, she scrambles into a sitting position, warily watching the door. There’s a small window at the top, and in the hallway she can see flashes of red that flash in time with the shrill wailing.

Huh. This is a new development. Hopefully the alarms signify something other than a crash landing, though it’s not like she’d know. In all of her time spent here (which could be days or weeks), the alarms have never gone off.

( _besides,_ _she’s going to kill krennic herself. she doesn’t want a malfunction to do all of the work for her._ )

She winces as she drags herself to her feet, leaning heavily against the wall. She wraps one arm around her stomach and rests the other on the wall, ignoring how the bruises on her throat pulse in time with her heartbeat and how her leg looks crooked underneath her. But she stays standing. That’s all that matters.

She wipes one shaky hand over her forehead, trying to get the sweat off of her feverish skin. An empty bottle of pills lies in the corner of the cell, but she can’t remember the last time she took any of the antibiotics. For all she knows, it could have been this morning–she has no real construct of time here, counting hours solely through when she is tortured and when she isn’t.

The window is too high up for her to get a good look out of it, and when she presses her ear up against the door, she can’t make out if anything is happening outside. The alarms are the only thing she can hear, loud and blaring, and she knows that her ears will be ringing for hours after.

Still, she stays standing, eyes locked on the door. If someone is going to come in here, whether or not they’re hostile she wants to be ready for a fight. She keeps her guard up, bracing herself for a fight.

( _if she’s up on her feet, then she still has a fighting chance. saw taught her that, all those years ago. and jyn’s never been one to roll over and accept death._

 _when death comes, it’s going to have to put up one hell of a fight to take her with it._ )

Her stomach growls, but she ignores it. Just like the pain, she pushes her hunger aside in her mind to focus on the more immediate issue. It doesn’t matter that even standing for this long makes her dizzy or that her ribs stick out farther than they should.

( _the last time she was this hungry was right after saw abandoned her. it’s been too long since hunger has last made her delirious._ )

Briefly, momentarily, she allows herself to hope that the Rebellion has finally come for her. But that illogical thought is pushed back almost immediately, locked into a box in the cave in her mind. She doesn’t know how long she’s been locked up here, but if the Rebellion had been planning on rescuing her, they would have done it by now.

She doesn’t have the chance to dwell on the thought much longer. When she strains her ears, it sounds almost like the door to her cell is being opened.

And then it does.

 

“Captain Andor.”

“Senator,” Cassian says, panting slightly from the exertion it took to get him to command. His armpits ache where the crutches hold him up. “Commander Skywalker said you requested to see me, ma’am?”

Command is busier than he thought it would be, but nobody chastises him for being out of medical. Draven stands off to the side, glancing over a datapad, but Cassian knows better than to think he’s not listening in. Leia stands behind Mothma, hands gripping the chair she’s standing behind so tightly that her knuckles are turning white.

“I did,” she says, clasping her hands in front of her. “It’s regarding Sergeant Kes Dameron. You are listed as one of his emergency contacts, right after–”

Shara Bey bursts through the door and without any formalities whatsoever, thunders, “What in the Force’s name kriffing happened to Kes?”

An amused look flashes across Mothma’s face despite the interruption before she schools her face back into something more neutral. “Right on time, Lieutenant Bey. As I was saying to Captain Andor here, the two of you are listed as Dameron’s emergency contacts.”

_“Cassian, we’re basically brothers,” Kes says, shoving the papers in his direction. “Listen, if I’m in trouble, I want you and Shara to know about it as soon as possible, okay?” He lets out a short laugh. “Or else the Alliance will tell you I’ve been killed weeks after I’ve died.”_

_“Kes–”_

_“I’ll sign yours too, okay?” Kes continues with a small smile. “You and Shara are basically the only family I’ve got right now. And I want to know when something happens to you, so. . .”_

_A lump grows in Cassian’s throat and his heart constricts. Swallowing it down, he accepts the papers from Kes with shaky hands and looks down at them._

_“All right. Let me go grab mine.”_

“What happened to him?” Shara demands, eyes flashing. Cassian doesn’t think he’s ever seen her look this frightened.

“On their way back from their last mission, the Pathfinders got intercepted by a Star Destroyer,” Mothma replies, sharing a look with Leia. “Their comms went out a couple of hours ago. It is, ah, unlikely that they’ll–”

“Don’t you dare finish that statement, ma’am,” Shara says evenly, crossing her arms over her chest. “They’re not dead yet. Send a team to go after them.”

In any other situation, he knows that Shara would be reprimanded for how she’s talking to her superiors. This is different. Her husband is either dead or will be soon enough, and the Alliance isn’t doing anything to help him. By the looks on Mothma and Leia’s faces, he can see that they know it’s their fault.

“That would be a suicide mission and you know it,” Leia interjects smoothly, stepping forward. Despite her harsh words, her eyes are kind. “I’m sorry, Lieutenant. We can’t afford to lose anyone else. There’s not much we can do now except hope.”

( _rebellions are built on hope. but what good is hope in this case, when it will do nothing to save the people they love?_ )

“That’s a load of bantha-shit and you all know it,” Shara hisses, shaking her head. Her mouth opens as if to say something else, but she decides against it. Before she turns on her heel and marches out of the room, she gives a mockery or a salute.

Leia turns to Cassian. “I’m sorry. I know the two of you were close.”

“Don’t, your Highness,” he says, shaking his head. The last thing he needs right now is empty words from someone who’s damned his friend. “Senator. General.” With that, Cassian hobbles out of the room after Shara.

( _he’s not sure he can handle the loss of another friend so soon._ )

 

The door opens to reveal a stormtrooper. Jyn doesn’t even think–she uses the last of her strength to charge forward and tackle the ‘trooper to the ground. The two of them fall in a tangle of limbs, and when they hit the floor, Jyn moves to straddle them.

( _this might be your only chance. make it count._ )

Just as she’s winding her arm back for a punch, the ‘trooper cries out, “Stop! I’m not with the Empire!”

Jyn narrows her eyes and punches him anyway, her hand meeting the plastic of their helmet with an unsatisfying _smack_. Her knuckles ache on impact and she’s pretty sure that her hand is going to be bruised once this is all over, but she’s not going to let this ‘trooper trick her into letting him go. “ _Don’t_ try that with me.”

“ _Fuck_ –” he swears, pushing her off of him. She sprawls backwards, panting and trying to refocus her vision. She blinks a couple of times before she can make out the sight in front of her. The ‘trooper is on his knees with his helmet off, looking at her incredulously. “What part of ‘I’m not with the Empire’ didn’t you understand?”

“Couldn’t be too sure,” Jyn replies, trying to sound nonchalant but her voice isn’t much louder than a dull rasp.

“Right. Well. Like I was going to say before you _attacked_ me–you’ve got a pretty mean right hook, by the way–anyway, I’m not an Imperial.”

Jyn meets his gaze, trying to gage if he’s lying to her. “Neither am I.” _Obviously._

The man tilts his head, tapping his chin. “You know, I was going to hide out in here until the alarms stopped ringing but I’ve got an idea. Want to get off this ship?”

So his mission isn’t to get her the hell out of here, then. She’s an afterthought, a means to an end. Still, it’s an opportunity and she’s not going to let it pass her by.

“I have business I need to take care of first,” she says evenly, trying to push herself to her feet. The man moves to steady her and she bats his arms away, growling. But it’s no use. When she tries to walk, she collapses back to the ground.

The man sighs, then runs a hand through his hair and glances behind him. “Look, we don’t have much time, okay? You can’t walk and we both need to get the hell out of here. I’ll help you with whatever you need me to and you help me escape. Deal?”

“Fine,” Jyn grits out, accepting his hand to help her back up. The sudden movement makes her gasp, tugging at her wounds unpleasantly. The man holds her up until the floor stops spinning. “Let’s go.”

“Right,” the man says, looking down at her dubiously. Wordlessly, he grabs his helmet off the ground. Before he puts it on, he says, “I’m Kes, by the way. Kes Dameron.”

“Liana Hallik,” Jyn grits out through clenched teeth, trying to will her injuries to hurt less. “You with the Rebellion, Dameron?”

“I’m not with the Empire,” he says offhandedly, but Jyn can see a liar from a mile away. She lets out a weak laugh–that’s a yes, then.

The alarms stop. Jyn glances behind her, but Dameron’s already got his helmet covering his face. “They must have finally grabbed the rest of my team,” he mutters under his breath, prodding her forward. Once they’re out in the hallway, he grabs one of her arms as if he’s transporting a prisoner. In reality, his grip is the only thing keeping Jyn upright.

“How’d you get away then?” Jyn whispers after a couple of steps.

“A ‘trooper boarded our ship. We knocked him out, I took the armor–” they reach the end of the hallway and Kes opens the door silently. When there’s no one immediately on the other side, he continues, “–and promised my team I would get them out of this.”

Jyn sighs. How the hell did she get stuck with a Rebellion soldier with a hero complex? But if push comes to shove, she’s killing Krennic and getting the out of here, with or without him.

They pass a squad of stormtroopers who don’t give them a second glance. When they’re safely away, Jyn can practically feel Dameron’s relief.

“Okay. This is working. Stay calm.”

“I _am_ calm,” Jyn retorts, jutting her chin up slightly. This is hardly the worst situation she’s been stuck in.

( _scarif had been worse._ )

She imagines that if Dameron’s helmet were off, he’d be shooting her a look of exasperation. “I was talking to myself, Hallik.”

_Force._

 

“Shara, wait!”

As soon as he calls out to her, she whirls around to face him. “We’re going after him, aren’t we?” she snaps, getting into his personal space and poking a finger at his chest. He’s considerably taller than her so she has to crane her neck to look up at him. “Come on, Cass. Kes needs us.”

“Shara, we can’t,” Cassian says softly, remembering what Draven said about going rogue again. His heart aches. “You know we can’t.”

“Why?” she asks, her voice cracking on the last note. “Why not? He _needs_ us!”

“A pilot and an Intelligence agent can’t take down a Star Destroyer alone,” he reminds her gently, watching as anger crumbles into something sadder. “And I’m in no shape to fight stormtroopers right now.”

Leia's right–it would be a suicide mission. He doesn't think about how he's already come back from alive. 

_(his luck has to run out eventually.)_

“I can’t lose him too, Cassian,” she whispers. “I can’t. . .” She pauses, bites her lip uncertainly, then closes the space in between them and buries her face in his chest.

He wraps his arms around her, crutches be damned. They clatter to the floor as he presses his lips to the top of Shara’s head. They’re standing in the middle of the hallway, but Cassian can’t bring himself to care. “I know, Shara,” he whispers, tears welling up in his own eyes. “I know. I’m sorry.”

( _how much longer until the rebellion takes everything from him?_ )

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i really like how this chapter has turned out and i hope y'all do as well! i love shara and kes so that might be why haha. also, this is an early update! finals are coming up so hopefully i can get the next chapter up in a timely fashion. if not, here's an early chapter lol
> 
> also i've added a tentative chapter number! the end result should be around and most likely will be, though it could be a little more or a little less. 
> 
> as always, thank you for reading!


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> just to be safe. content warning for jyn not really giving a damn if she lives or dies kinda attitude, nothing too major though

“You aren’t looking too good, Hallik,” Dameron hisses between his teeth, pulling her into a nearby storage closet. Once the door is closed, he takes off his helmet and steadies her with both of his hands. His eyes are concerned; she doesn’t know why he cares. “What happened to you?”

“I was a–prisoner,” Jyn slurs, wavering slightly despite his grip. Her eyelids flutter, but she knows that she shouldn’t sleep right now, no matter how much she wants to. She can’t kill Krennic if she dies right now. “What d’you think hap’ens?”

“Shit,” he grits out, grasping her shoulders with two hands and shaking her slightly. She relishes the feel of his cool hands on her fevered skin. “You gotta stay awake, okay?”

“Mhmm,” Jyn agrees, her head dropping onto her chest. With great effort, she pulls it back up and tries to look Dameron in the eyes. She’s fine. Just a little tired. That’s all, it’s nothing to worry about. “Yeah. . .I gotta. . .do somethin’. Kill ‘im. Then I can. . .sleep. . .”

He looks alarmed at her comment, but still nods fervently, as if agreeing with her will somewhow keep her awake. “Yeah, that’s right. You have to kill someone. So you can’t go to sleep until you do that and after we rescue my crew, okay?”

Jyn narrows her eyes and manages to tell him, “‘m not a murderer. S’not why ‘m here anyway. It’s ‘cause ‘m a rebel. . . .Don’t tell anyone, though, ‘kay?”

( _sure, she’s killed before, but almost always in self-defense. she’s not a murderer. but this? she’s going to repay krennic for all of pain he’s caused her._ )

“Yeah, I figured,” he mutters. At this point, he’s practically holding her up. “New plan. You’re going to collapse at any minute now so I’m just going to. . .” he lowers her to the ground gently, leaning her up against the wall. “I’m going to see if I can rescue my team, okay? Then I’m coming back for you. But you can’t fall asleep. Just. . .ah, rest here for awhile.”

Jyn shakes her head slowly. Dameron’s figure is hazy above her and she has to squint to make him out, but she can barely see his face. “Don’t leave. People always leave and then never. . .they never come back.”

“I promise I’ll come back, Liana,” he says solemnly, placing a hand over his heart. It might be the fever (and if he asks, that’s what she’ll say) but that small gesture brings tears to Jyn’s eyes. “And I don’t break my promises.”

“‘kay,” Jyn replies, for lack of anything better to say. She’s getting tired anyway and doesn’t want to argue the issue anymore. If he doesn’t come back, then he’ll be just like everyone else who she’s let into her life.

( _and_ _if he does come back, then he’ll be like cassian._ )

She watches Dameron put his helmet back on and hears the sound of the closet door opening and then shutting softly before her head drops forward and her eyes flutter closed.

She’s never been good at following orders anyway.

 

When Draven comms him with information about a potential mission, Cassian’s not technically cleared for duty yet. But it’s wartime, and he’s well enough, and the Rebellion needs every able bodied soldier they can get their hands on.

( _able bodied is a relative term. physically, he’s on the mend and yet he can’t remember the last time he slept peacefully without drugs.)_

The job itself is easy enough. Cassian knows he has Draven to thank for that; even though the General appears as cold and uncaring, the two of them share some sort of bond that’s almost familial. Even without saying anything, Cassian knows that Draven understands he’s still on the mend.

There’s nothing Draven can do, however, even if he wanted to. The Rebellion needs soldiers and that’s exactly what he is. Albeit a broken one, but a soldier nonetheless.

He’s been assigned as backup for one of the newer Intelligence recruits, which he hasn’t been placed as in a long time. If all goes well, he won’t even have to leave the ship, since he’ll be able to monitor the situation through comms and hourly reports.

Secretly he’s thankful, even though he knows that he can be doing more to help. His legs aren’t completely healed yet and this is the first mission he’s run in the past decade or so without Kay. Having a human partner who won’t be spouting out statistics left and right will be an adjustment, to say in the least.

His partner’s name is Private Ria Halos. He doesn’t know who she is, but he’s been out of commission for the past couple weeks so it doesn’t concern him as much as it normally would. While he normally knows majority of the faces in the Rebellion, he’s been stuck in the medbay ever since he broke out two weeks ago and hasn’t had the chance to watch the crowds as much as he usually does.

Besides the nurses, Shara had been his only company. She’d regaled him with her pilot stories and kept him up to date on the gossip. Neither of them talked about Kes. There hadn’t been a point in it, not when it’s clear that he’s not going to make it back to base.

Neither of them talked about how they were each other’s only family now either.

Still, Shara hadn’t mentioned there being a large crop of new recruits lately in their talks, though it’s entirely possible that this is one of her first missions for the Alliance. Her file did say she had risen through the ranks remarkably quickly. He’s going to have to be extra vigilant, then, if that’s the case, to make sure everything goes by the books. After all, one of his first missions had ended with him stealing and re-programming an Imperial droid.

( _not like that had been a bad thing, though._ )

With a sigh, he shoves the datapad containing the mission brief into his bag and heads for the hangar bay. He’s still limping; he tries not to let it show. The last thing he needs is to be sent back to the medical bay with a firm order to take it easy for a couple of days.

After all, the Alliance needs him. What good is he if he can’t help?

 

Jyn wakes to alarms. Again.

 _“Kriffing hell,”_ she mutters, then swears viciously in just about every language she knows before her stream of curse words breaks off into a coughing fit.

( _he never came back._ )

Her head pounds in time with her heartbeat and bile creeps up the back of her throat. She leans her head back against the wall and shuts her eyes, willing herself not to puke in an Imperial storage closet.

It doesn’t work.

Two seconds later, she’s on her hands and knees retching up what must have been her breakfast. She can’t remember eating it. It doesn’t matter, though. It’s not like it had been very much.

As soon as she’s wiping a hand over the back of her mouth and trying not to gag at the smell, the door cracks open and a figure slips inside. Jyn struggles to get to her feet but the person beats her to it, helping her up. With a start, she realizes that it’s Dameron. He’s no longer wearing the stormtrooper armor, but instead an Imperial uniform that looks too much like the one Cassian wore on Scarif.

( _that memory alone is enough to make her stomach churn with nausea again._ )

“We need to go,” he says urgently, pushing her forward. She places one hand on her forehead, wincing at how her head throbs in time with the alarms. “ _Now,_ Hallik.”

“What hap’ened?” she responds after a couple of beats. Her feet aren’t moving like they’re supposed to and she falls backwards, only being held up by Dameron’s eyes. Her head _really_ hurts and she’s _really_ hot. Suddenly the prison uniform she’s wearing feels like too many clothes. She needs to take it off. “It’s so–hot. Why’s it so. . hot?”

Dameron swears, running a hand through his sweat-dampened hair. For some reason, he looks distressed at the sight of her. Jyn figures it’s probably because it’s been a couple weeks since she'd last showered. She certainly feels disgusting. “Listen, I kriffed up. We need to go and you won’t make it out of here walking. Can I carry you?”

“You gotta. . .take me out f’. . .a drink first. . .” she mumbles, closing her eyes and swaying slightly. The last thing she needs is to be carried through a Star Destroyer. She’s fine. Just give her a blaster and she’ll be fine. “I can. . .I can walk. . .”

He makes a noise of disagreement, then bends down to pick her up. But he doesn’t grab her bridal style like she had expected. Instead, he hoists her over his shoulder, keeping a firm grip on her legs. “Sorry,” he grunts, once they’re out in the hallway. Every step he takes jostles her against his back. “I need one hand on my blaster.”

“S’not okay,” Jyn mutters against his shirt, letting her arms hang above her head uselessly. Despite her words, she’s too tired to fight him right now. Later, though. She’s going to fight him later. “Put me _down._ ”

“No can do,” he replies, tightening his hold on her as he turns a corner. As Dameron picks up his pace into an unsteady job, Jyn groans, the motion making her dizzy. “ _Shit_ –don’t puke on me! We’re almost there, I promise!”  

In need of a distraction, she gasps out, “Why. . .why are th’ alarms goin’ off again?”

His fingers dig into her calves. “I made a mistake,” he grits out after a moment’s hesitation, clearly not wanting to talk about it, “and got my team killed.”

Cassian falling down the data tower plays over and over in her head. She knows all too well how he feels.

( _she should have gone back for him._ )

A squad of stormtroopers is coming down the hallway to her left; she can hear the sound of their boots pounding on the steel floor. When she tells Dameron as much, he only picks up his pace and heads toward the nearby room. Pulling out a keycard from his pocket, he swipes it through the lock and darts into the room. “Perks of stealing an officer’s uniform.”

The room they’re in look like barracks. There’s a set of bunk beds pushed in the corner and he sets Jyn down on the bottom one gently. She puts her head in her hands and tries to stop the room from spinning while he pauses to catch his breath.

“We’re almost there,” he says finally, shooting a look at the door. She can’t hear the stormtroopers anymore, but she’s not so foolish to believe they’re gone. “I managed to find the hangar bay before coming back for you.”

“That was–too close out there,” she manages, wrapping one arm around her stomach. She can feel her wound burning through the thin material of her shirt. “You should go. I. . .have t’ do somethin’ here.”

( _something she should have done on the top of the data tower, injuries be damned_.)

“You’re crazy.  _Really?_ You think I’m just going to leave you behind after I left about ten of my men to the mercy of the Empire?”

“Not your fault.”

“I don’t care,” Dameron snaps, pacing away from her and throwing his hands up in the air. “Those were _my_ men, under _my_ control. I left them to die because there–there–”

Jyn fills in the rest for him, knowing exactly what he’s going to say. “There wasn’t anything. . .” a pause, a rattling breath, “anythin’ you could have done to save them.”

He levels her with his gaze. “And that’s exactly why I can’t leave you behind. Well, I wouldn’t either way, but. You get what I mean.”

Jyn shakes her head and tries to stand up, gripping the metal bed frame for support. “Listen, I have to do something. I gotta. . .” her vision tunnels, then clears once again. “I have to kill Krennic, okay?”

Dameron gapes. She juts her chin up defiantly and stares him down.

He breaks first. “You’re not serious, are you? Force, you’re serious. Are you kidding me, Hallik? How the kriff are you going to kill a high level Imperial officer and make it out of here alive?”

“It’s Jyn,” she says evenly. She figures he ought to know her name if she’s going to die on this ship. And he hadn’t left her behind, which counts for–something. At his look of confusion, she adds, “My name's Jyn. And I don’t need t' make it out of here alive. I just. . .I just need him dead.”

“Liana–Jyn. I’m not leaving you behind so you can go off and kill someone!” he snaps. “My whole team is dead. If I can’t get them out, then I can at least rescue you.”

“I’m not. . .going _with_ you,” she grits out, crossing her arms over her chest. Her strength wavers; she’s been standing up too long but she’s not going to back down. “I’m killing him, Dameron. Kes–” her voice cracks, “I _need_ to.”

“No,” he says, shaking his head. In one fluid movement, he bends down to pick her up and toss her over his shoulder. “No, we’re getting out of here alive. I’m not going to let you die!”

Jyn struggles in his grip, but her vision is growing darker and darker. She’s so hot again all of the sudden. Even as she grows weaker and her eyelids flutter closed, she fights, beating her fists against his back. “Kes, _please_. . .”

As she falls into unconsciousness, she thinks she hears him whisper, “I’m sorry, Jyn. I really am.”

 

“Private?”

“Captain Andor, sir,” Halos salutes, all business. “We should be ready to leave as soon as you are, sir. I’m just finishing up the preflight checks.”

Cassian nods, dropping his bag off in a corner of the cargo bay and heading up front to the cockpit. Halos follows him. It takes some effort to climb up the ladder with his leg, but he (barely) manages. To hide his lack of breath, Cassian asks, “Any trouble?”

“No, sir. Everything looks good.”

He checks over the controls himself, just to make sure. When he’s satisfied with her work, he gives her a sharp nod that has her ducking her head to hide a smile. Cassian pretends not to see, busying himself with the controls. “Strap in then, Private.”

“Yes, sir,” she says, heading back to the cargo bay. He’s both relieved and disappointed when she doesn’t sit in the copilot’s chair.

( _jyn had tried to sit there once, on the way to jedha. when kay had returned from checking over the engine and she refused to get out of his seat, he sat on top of her and pretended she wasn’t there._

_cassian had hidden his laughter until she left with a disgruntled look on her face. he, unlike kay, hadn’t wanted to risk jyn’s ire, especially not when she still had his blaster._

_“what?” kay had asked petulantly, his head swiveling in his direction. “she was in_ my _seat.”_ )

“This is Captain Cassian Andor, requesting permission for takeoff,” he says into his headset, typing in coordinates for Dantooine on the flight computer. If all goes well, they should be on planet in about four hours.

_“You’re good to go, Captain Andor. May the Force be with you.”_

Takeoff is a little bumpier than he would have liked. He’s not fully used to doing this all by himself; this is the first time he’s piloted a ship in a long time without a partner.

( _without kay._ )

Once the ship’s safely on autopilot, he climbs down the ladder back into the cargo bay where Halos is sitting. She has a datapad in her hands and is looking over it attentively. Cassian itches to do the same, but he’s only on backup. This is her mission. All he has to do is monitor the situation and fly the getaway shuttle. “We should be arriving at about 0500 hours. Get some rest if you can.”

“Will do, sir,” she say as he grabs his bag off the floor and heads into the crew cabins. But by the way she’s pouring over the mission brief, he doubts that she will. He doesn’t think that he will either, but his leg is aching and it can’t hurt to lay down for an hour or two.

When he goes through his bag to grab his datapad, he finds his blaster underneath. For a second, he’s confused. Hadn’t she taken it–

Then he remembers.

 

The third time Jyn wakes, it’s blissfully silent except for the thrum of a ship underneath her. It takes her a couple of seconds to remember what happened. This must be the ship Kes managed to steal.

A small groan of pain slips through her lips before she can stop it as she struggles to open her eyes and Kes is at her side in an instant, concern in his eyes. “Don’t move–you’re burning up. The wound on your stomach–”

His face twists and she knows that whatever’s wrong with it can’t be good. Guess the Empire’s medical supplies hadn’t done as much for her as she thought they had. “How. . .bad?”

“It reopened while I was trying to get us out. I set you down and suddenly–" he laughs uncomfortably, scratching the back of his neck, "there's blood all over the back of my shirt and the front of yours. I think it's infected, too,” he tells her as he crouches down next to her. He smoothes a piece of sweat soaked hair off of her forehead. The cool of his hand relieves some of the tension threatening to break out of her skull. “There’s not enough medical supplies on board to treat you properly, so I need you to hold on, okay? We’re almost there.”

“Where?”

Kes looks away guiltily. “The Rebellion base. They don’t know that you’re here, only that we need a medical team as soon as we land. I didn’t want them turning you away so, ah, maybe act as trustworthy as possible? It’s technically not allowed for me to do this.”

( _while she likes to believe that the rebellion wouldn’t turn her away, she doesn’t know what they think of her going rogue and her father’s crimes against the galaxy. maybe they would, without cassian there to welcome her home._ )

“Why–” She tries to ask, but her throat is dry and it turns into a coughing fit. Kes makes soothing noises as he turns her head to the side and rubs her back. She can taste blood in the back of her mouth but she doesn’t know why.

“That’s it,” he murmurs as her coughing subsides. She clings to his voice, trying not to fall back into blackness. “You’re all right, Jyn. Just get some rest. We’ll be there soon.”

“Why. . .” Her voice trails off, but he seems to understand anyway.

“I have a good feeling about you,” Kes replies after a couple seconds of hesitation. “I don’t know why, but you just–you remind me of a friend. You’re nothing alike, but he’s a brother to me. I don’t know, it’s stupid but–”

“S’not stupid,” she slurs, eyes fluttering closed. She thinks she’d like to meet this friend of his, especially one Kes speaks so highly about.

“We’re almost there. Hold on a little longer, okay?”

Jyn sleeps.

 

As soon as they land on Dantooine, Cassian starts to get a bad feeling.

But he brushes it off, telling himself not to worry. This is a fairly simple mission and Halos seems capable enough. The only reason he’s worried, he thinks, is because of how wrong it had all gone on Scarif.

He sees Halos off, making sure her comms are secure. As she leaves, he lingers in the doorway of the shuttle, watching her silhouette disappear over the horizon and into the nearby city. For some reason, it feels as if he’s never going to see her again.

At that thought, he scoffs and heads back into the ship, climbing up to the cockpit. He knows that he’s being ridiculous.

( _a few hours later, when everything’s gone to hell, cassian realizes that he should have listened to his gut._ )

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> uh yeah anyway sorry about this esp. to those who were expecting a reunion this chapter....i can say with CERTAINTY that there will be next chapter i promise
> 
> and i managed to post on time! i'll dab for that. thank u so much to everyone who reads, leaves kudos, or comments. it means the world that people are actually reading my writing and im not just shouting out into the void


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> recommended listening for the last scene: the boys are back in town ;)

Jyn remembers very little during the rest of the flight to the Rebellion’s new headquarters. In the haze of her fever, all of her thoughts are a little. . .fuzzy. Everything is hazy and foggy, shapes blurred and standing just out of her reach. She’s cold too–but there’s something wrapped around her. A blanket, maybe. When she feels better, she’ll have to thank whoever did that.

Kes is with her for most of the flight, switching between trying to keep her conscious and trying to fly the shuttle. His wife’s the pilot, he tells her. She’s the one who knows how to fly a plane. And with every rattle and bang of the aircraft, she believes him–she’s very close to asking the Force to keep them up in the air.  

( _not like she can do much better. she knows the basics, but saw had never taught her anymore than that and she had never bothered to learn._ )

He leaves her very briefly to land to the ship, and in those few seconds, she manages to fall asleep. In her defense, she’s just so tired and only meant to rest her eyes for a second. Or two. Or maybe about a minute. The timing of it is a bit unclear, but that’s okay. She’s not exactly sure how long she’s out, but she wakes to Kes shaking her shoulders with a panicked look in his eyes.

“Hey, hey! Just a few more seconds, okay, Jyn? The medics are on their way. Don’t sleep yet.”

“An’thin’ f’ you,” she tries to tell him, but all that comes out is a garbled mess of words that doesn’t sound anything like what she’s trying to say.

He seems to get the idea, kneeling back at her side as the doors to the shuttle open. A whole team of people push their way inside and their voices all mix together in a cacophony of noise that makes her head hurt even more. There’s obviously some confusion as Kes stands in front of them, unharmed, but once they catch sight of her, feverish and bleeding, on the bench behind him, the medical team rushes into action.

She’s never liked medics. This is no exception. As the doctors swarm her, yelling things to one another, poking and prodding her, Jyn cries out, struggling weakly. She just wants it to be quiet it’s so loud and everything hurts why won’t they be quiet so she can _sleep_?

“Jyn!” Kes is back at her side in an instant, trying to calm her down. There’s a woman with dark hair and eyes pushing through the crowd to try to get to him and Jyn can see how his eyes light up when he sees her, but still, Kes stays by her side. He doesn’t leave her alone with the doctors, doesn’t abandon her. “They’re trying to help you but you need to let them. It’s okay. I’m not going to let anyone hurt you. You’re part of my team now, understand?”

She almost laughs at that, because how could she be a part of his team when she’s broken practically all of the Rebellion’s rules? Technically, she hasn’t even joined up but that doesn’t matter. A criminal is still a criminal, even under a different name–and she’s had many different names in her lifetime.

( _in this case, that name had been rogue one._ )

The small distraction is all the medics need to lift her up off the bench and onto a stretcher. The movement jostles her wound and she bites her tongue to stop from crying out, squeezing her eyes shut to keep the tears at bay. She can’t afford to look any weaker than she already is right now.

“Sergeant Dameron, sir, where’s the rest of your team? Who is this woman?”

“I rescued her off the Star Destroyer that had captured the rest of my team. They didn’t make it off. We did.”

An oxygen mask is placed over her mouth but she doesn’t quite understand why. She can breathe just fine–it’s her stomach that needs taking care of. But whatever they’re pumping through the mask makes her feel lighter than air and she finds herself too exhausted to care.

“How do you know she’s not a spy for the Empire? We can’t afford any risks right–”

“She’s  _not_ a spy and you better kriffing treat her, you hear me? She helped me get out of that mess when we were captured.”

The stretchers moving. . .somewhere. She doesn’t know where, exactly. All she knows is that wherever they are is way colder than Yavin ever was. Her vision is foggy and she can just make out the form Kes jogging next to her. She reaches up a hand to him, unbelieving. “Kes–”

He grabs it, giving it a gentle squeeze before tucking it back underneath the blankets at her side. The woman from earlier has tears in her eyes and she’s gripping Kes’s arm, but she looks just as worried as he does. Jyn wants to know why, why the hell would she worried about someone she doesn’t even know? What good would this woman get out of worrying about her?

“It’s all going okay, Jyn. I promise.”

“Wait–did you just say ‘Jyn,’ sir? As in _Jyn Erso_?”

She’s sleepy, all of the sudden. Kes isn’t telling her that she can’t sleep anymore, so she figures that it’s all right. Besides, she has been following his orders all day. It’s about time for a little rebellion.

“ _Kriffing hell!_ You’re telling me that I’ve been dragging Jyn Erso along this whole kriffing time?”

“You’re telling me you didn’t know, sir?”

“Of course I didn’t know, I–”

Jyn sleeps. It hurts too much to stay awake.

 

The bad feeling from earlier doesn’t go away, even as he listens to Halos make the deal she’s supposed to. He’s got his bad leg propped up on the chair next to him and he knows, realistically despite the gut feeling, that everything will _probably_ be fine.

But–

It’s minutes later when Halos’s voice crackles over the comms, sounding slightly panicked. Everything up until this point has gone as planned, so he’s not worried until she says, “Listen, I have to go. My brother’s sick, I have to take care of him.”

_Shit._

He scrambles up, throwing the headset down and snatching his comm off the table next to him. “What happened?” he hisses, strapping his thigh holster to his good leg and snapping his blaster into place. “What’s going on?”

There’s silence for a couple seconds before her response makes it back to him. Cassian can hear the sound of blaster fire in the distance along with her ragged breathing. “Got recognized. There’s a whole kriffing squadron after me now–”

Cassian swears in Festian, running his fingers through his hair. His mind desperately racks for solutions, but it comes up blank. It’s been so long since he’s run an op, and without Kay’s help _and_ a bad leg–

( _maybe he’s not suited for fieldwork anymore. maybe he’s useless to the rebellion now._ )

“Get out of there,” he says, trying not to let the panic creep into his voice. He wishes he could see her–he doesn’t know what to do being left behind like this. “Don’t worry about the mission, _just get out of there_!”

“Almost outside of the city, sir,” she grits out, her voice barely distinguishable through her heavy breathing. “I’m almost there.”

“I’ll cover you,” he promises, leaning heavily against the side of the shuttle. There’s nothing else he can do at this point–if he runs out into the field, he’s just going to get both of them killed. His leg throbs in time with his racing heart, but he pushes that down. He can focus on the pain later, he can’t afford to let it distract him now.

With surprisingly steady hands, he holds onto his blaster and waits.

 

When they put Jyn into the bacta tank, she’s still half-awake. She’s drowsy and blinking wearily, though she struggles to keep her eyes open. She can barely make out the medics through the bacta surrounding her.

Her father stands off to a corner and raises his hand up in a wave. His mouth is moving, but she can’t hear what he’s saying.

Jyn closes her eyes.

 

Minutes pass. It’s taking too long.

Cassian imagines that if Kay were here, he would tell him that there is a 87% chance that Private Ria Halos is already dead.

( _before scarif, he would have left five minutes ago. the mission comes first._ )

Now, he waits.

( _he’s not one to leave people behind. not anymore._ )

 

“Senator.”

“Jyn Erso,” Mon Mothma says, dipping her head in acknowledgement. Her hands rest in her lap and she’s wearing her usual white ensemble that looks so perfect, so _immaculate,_ that Jyn has to wonder if the other woman has ever gone outside before.

( _jyn can’t even remember the last time she had clean clothes to wear._ )

“I imagine you’re feeling better,” she continues, unaware of Jyn’s internal dialogue.

Jyn fiddles with the IV sticking out of her pain, relishing the sting when she moves it, and says drily, “As well as I can be after being tortured for weeks.”

The nurse had told her the extent of her injuries once she had become fully conscious and no longer hallucinating. The wound on her stomach is no longer infected, but there’s an angry looking scar that no amount of bacta can fix. There’s a heavy amount of bandages wrapped around her gut, but Jyn imagines that it’ll fit in quite nicely with the rest of her scars.

Her ankle, which had likely only had a stress fracture on Scarif, had gotten worse in the time she’d spent in her cell and had healed incorrectly. She’s probably going to have a limp for the rest of her life. After hearing that news, Jyn had curled her hands into fists so tightly that when she opened them, there were bloody crescents lining her palm.

( _not to mention the countless bruises, cuts, scrapes, electricity burns, and a broken toe she hadn’t noticed. but bacta had healed all of that. it had healed almost everything, except what’s going on in her head._ )

“Yes, well,” Mothma has the grace to look uncomfortable with her boldness. “I’ll cut to the chase, then. I’m here to offer you a position with the Rebellion, if you’d like to stay.”

Jyn laughs, though it comes out sounding more like a wheeze. “Let me get this straight. I take about thirty of your best men, go rogue, and then get them all killed, and now you’re offering _me_ a place in the Rebellion, is that it?”

“I am,” Mothma says calmly. “Your mission on Scarif was surprisingly successful and the Council has decided to act as if it had been a sanctioned operation.”

That hurts for some reason. After all the work she had done to try and convince the Council to send people to Scarif, once it goes well, they decide to take credit for it? Jyn turns her head to the side so Mothma doesn’t see the sudden rage in her eyes. “So what? I still broke the rules.” _We all did._

Mothma rests her hand over Jyn’s, but Jyn flinches away, pulling her hand to her chest as if she’s been burned. “You’re a capable fighter, Jyn. The Rebellion would benefit from having you on our side.”

Jyn still doesn’t look at her, but says, “I don’t know.”

Mothma’s chair scrapes against the floor when she stands. “Think about it. I’ll come back later for your answer.”

Jyn has thought it about it. And she already knows her answer–it’s there, on the tip of her tongue, but Mothma leaves and Jyn remains silent.

( _she could have answered, but for some reason, she didn’t._ )

 

Finally, finally, after minutes of comm silence, Cassian sees Halos.

He also sees the stormtroopers after her, though it’s considerably less than a squadron. As he raises his blaster to shoot them, a small smile tugs up the corner of his mouth. It seems that she’s more capable than he originally thought.  

“Let’s go!” He nearly roars as she sprints in his direction, only popping out of his cover to provide cover fire. Shots hit the side of the shuttle and he swears, hoping that it doesn’t go up in flames before they can get the hell out of there.

She’s almost to his side when she stumbles, taking a hit to the shoulder and falling to her knees. Cassian doesn’t think, he just acts, jumping out of the shuttle to get to her side and haul her back up. His leg jars on impact and something pops in his hip, but he grits his teeth and grabs her arm, helping her to her feet.

“Thanks,” Halos breathes out, eyebrows furrowed from the pain as he hoists her into the shuttle and clambers up after her.

As Cassian scrambles to the cockpit, she stays behind and tries to pick off a few more ‘troopers, but it’s no use. She’s only going to get herself killed out in the open like that. “Get up here, Private!”

She’s at his side in an instant, pulling the door shut and nearly jumping up the ladder to sit in the copilot’s chair next to him. Cassian has to hand it to Draven–the kid is eager, at the very least, and as he watches her out of the corner of his eye, she seems to know what she’s doing.

“You know how to fly?”

“I know enough, Captain,” she manages, sweat beading on her forehead. He gives a sharp nod at that. It’s good enough.

It’s touch and go for a couple of seconds, especially when Cassian thinks one of the ‘troopers might have hit the engines, but they manage to get off the ground and into the sky, leaving Dantooine far behind and the stormtroopers just a speck in the distance.

When they’re in hyperspace and the adrenaline starts to wear off, spikes of pain radiate through his hip every time he adjusts it. Looking over at Halos, he can see that she’s not doing so well either. Her face is pale and she’s pressing a hand over the hole in her shoulder, but blood leaks out through her fingers.

“I’ll get the medkit,” he says, standing with difficulty and almost crumpling to the floor when he’s upright. Instead, he grips the back of his chair and squeezes his eyes shut until the pain recedes slightly and he can see again. Then, he limps his way to the back of the cockpit and pulls out the kit from one of the upper shelves.

“What happened out there?” he asks, letting out a pained breath as he sinks back into his chair. Thankfully, he doesn’t have to shift too much to see her shoulder, and she’s already trying to pull the burned mess of her shirt out of the wound.

“There was a raid on the bar I was in–” another tug, a breath sucked in through her teeth, “and I was trying to get–I was trying to leave when one of them– _fuck!_ ”

Cassian bats her hands away from her shoulder impatiently and grips the material of her shirt tightly in one hand. “This is going to hurt,” he warns and waits for her nod of approval before he rips the burned shirt from her skin.

The smell of burning flesh fills the cockpit as Halos cries out in pain, folding in on herself. Cassian’s rustling through the medkit when she looks back up. He can’t help but notice the tears on her cheeks as she tugs her shirt off over her head.

“Did you have to be so rough, Captain?” She manages through gritted teeth.

“Had to get it out somehow,” he admits offhandedly, though the corner of his mouth tugs up in a smile. He offers her a bacta patch and watches as she smoothes it over her wound gratefully. When she catches him looking at her, he clears his throat and looks away, flushing.

 _(missions didn't used to go like this._ )

“You said someone recognized you. How?”

She shrugs, but he doesn’t buy it. “I don’t know. One of them must have seen me around somewhere or something, sir.”

He raises an eyebrow in sheer disbelief.

“I heard something crack back there, sir,” she says instead. “You going to use any of this bacta for yourself?”

“ _Don’t,_ ” he snaps, narrowing his eyes. He doesn’t think bacta will fix what’s wrong with him–a dislocated hip or anything else. “What the hell happened back there?”

“I defected, okay?” she responds hotly, then shrinks back when she realizes the aggressiveness of her tone, adding belatedly, “I think I knew some of the ‘troopers back in that bar, sir. I might have–I didn’t look where I was firing–” she bites her lips, curling her fingers in her lap. “ _They_ didn’t have a choice– _I_ didn’t have a choice. My family–”

Cassian cuts her off before she can continue, feeling a pang of sympathy. “It’s fine, Private.”

( _he wants to say something about how he knew an imperial defector and how he was one of the kindest people cassian had ever met, but he had only know bodhi for about a week before cassian had gotten him killed on scarif._ )

“No, it’s not. I shouldn’t hesitated. I think that’s how–”

“Halos. Ria,” he says gently, regret flashing in his eyes. “It’s fine. I’m sorry I snapped.”

“I still got the datachip, sir,” she says, digging through her pockets and presenting the chip to him almost like an apology. “Even with all. . .all the trouble.”

“Thanks,” he murmurs as he accepts it, looking at it quickly before slipping it into his jacket pocket. He checks the nav computers before adding, “I think it’s about time to pull out of hyperspace.”

“Your leg–”

“It’s fine,” he says quickly, brushing her off to turn back to the controls of the ship. “Let’s get going, okay?”

She shoots him a dubious look, but doesn’t say anything.

( _kay would have said something._ _jyn would have said something._ )

 

“I’m fine,” Jyn hisses angrily, crossing her arms over her chest the best she can with an IV still attached to her hand. She’s in a space of her own, with curtains drawn to separate her from the rest of the patients. The enclosed space feels too much like her cell on Wobani and she struggles to control her heart rate. “If I can walk out of a Star Destroyer, then I can get up and–”

“Sergeant Dameron said that he had to carry you most of the way,” the nurse remarks all too cheerfully, pulling Jyn’s blankets higher onto her chest. They’re too tight, feeling almost like a restraint. Jyn suspects that they are, especially since she hasn’t given Mothma her answer yet. “It’ll be a couple more days until you’re allowed to leave your bed, Miss Erso. Then you’ll be in physical therapy.”

Jyn grits her teeth. This is hardly the worst injury she’s ever had and she’s about to give the nurse a piece of her mind when the sound of arguing filters through the curtains.

She stops in her tracks, mouth still open. She knows that voice. She _knows_ that accent.

“I don’t need any bacta, I’m _fine_ –”

The nurse takes her shock as confusion, saying, “He sounds a lot like you do, Miss Erso. They just got back from Dantooine, I believe. The private took a nasty shot to the shoulder, though I’m not sure about the captain.”

“What–”

The nurse pulls back the curtains to her room before Jyn can say anything else. Cassian Andor stands right in front of her, arguing with another doctor and holding up a woman with a blaster wound that Jyn doesn’t recognize. She seems to be supporting him as much as he is her.

( _the nurse had told her that her fever was gone. she wonders absently why the woman would be so cruel as to lie._ )

He doesn’t see her, not at first. Jyn’s eyes go wide and she blinks once, twice, but he’s still there when she looks in his direction again. Her mouth opens, as if to say something, but her chest feels as if it’s caving in and suddenly she can’t breathe and the heart rate monitor next to her bed speeds up and she touches her throat but her necklace isn’t there Krennic took it–

He looks in her direction and stops abruptly. The woman at his side protests until she realizes what he’s looking at and quiets, looking between the two of them anxiously.

His name is an exhale from her lips. “ _Cassian._ ”

Cassian’s free hand scrubs at his eyes as if to make sure that she’s real. A broken laugh breaks from her mouth. “You’re alive,” she says, choking on her words. Tears start falling from her eyes but she doesn’t care, doesn’t mind crying over Cassian Andor. “You’re _alive_.”

“Jyn,” he breathes and suddenly he’s at her side, nearly crushing her with his body as he touches her face, her arms, her skin. He’s crying too, and his hands shake when he cups her face in his hands. The medbay is almost completely silent except for the two of them. “I thought–Force, I thought I was _alone_.”

“Me too,” she sobs, pulling him into a hug and burying her face into the crook of his neck. “I thought I was the only one who survived. I thought you died, Cassian. I thought you _died_.”

“Me too,” he murmurs into her hair, still damp from her bacta treatment earlier that morning. “When you weren’t at the top of the data tower–”

“You climbed up? I thought you–” _I thought you had abandoned me._

“Never,” Cassian whispers, holding her tighter against his chest. “I came back for you. I was just a little too late. I’m so sorry, Jyn.”

“It’s okay,” she says softly, rubbing his back the best she can. “You’re here now. It’s okay.”

The nurse from earlier cuts into their conversation. “Captain Andor, the bacta tank is ready for you now.”

“You’re hurt?” Jyn demands when he pulls away, not missing the grimace that flashes across his face. “What happened?”

“I’m fine, Jyn,” he responds, giving her hand a gentle squeeze. “It’s an old injury. I’m not the one lying in a hospital bed right now.”

She can see the way he looks over her, checking for injuries. His eyes darken at the sight of the faded bruises and electricity scars lining her neck. Instead of turning away, she meets his gaze head on, raising her chin slightly.

( _i survived. we both survived._ )

“Jyn–”

“Captain Andor,” the nurse tuts, crossing her arms over her chest. “You can see Miss Erso when you’re done.”

“You’ll come back?” she whispers, hating how vulnerable her voice sounds, but she’s been so alone for so long and she doesn’t want to live like this anymore.

“I will,” he says. “I promise.”

As she watches the nurse help him to his bacta tank, Jyn feels something like hope burning in her chest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the chapter we've all been waiting for!! thank you all so much for reading, commenting, and leaving kudos!!


	6. Chapter 6

The three of them–him, Kes, and Jyn–are easily the loudest people in the medical bay right now.

“So,” Kes drawls, leaning back ever so slightly in his chair, “you couldn’t have mentioned, you know, maybe _once_ that you were Jyn Erso? I mean, yes, I realize that we were in a Star Destroyer, but–”

Cassian sends a furtive glance toward the curtains dividing them. A nurse had come in a few minutes ago to tell them to quiet down, and Jyn and Kes had not-so-subtely given each other a fist bump before the nurse had even left. At this rate, he knows, someone should be coming in again in about five minutes.

“When would I have told you?” Jyn asks outrageously, but Cassian can see a hint of a smirk curling up at the corners of her mouth. Kes and Jyn have only known each other for about three days but the banter between them already flows easily. “I was passed out for half of the time! And did you have to tell the nurse that?”

 _“Force–”_ Kes puts his head in his hands mock-horror, but his shoulders shake with hidden laughter. “I carried Jyn kriffing Erso through a kriffing _Star Destroyer._ ”

“Yeah, and you’re a snitch, Kes Dameron,” Jyn fires back, crossing her arms across her chest. “I could have been out of here days ago.”

Cassian hides a smile as he wipes a hand over his face. Since he got back from Dantooine, Jyn hasn’t done much except sleep (though not for lack of trying to stay awake). To see her up and arguing with one of his closest friends makes him. . .something he hasn’t felt in long, long time.

( _happiness. he thinks it might be happiness._ )

“She read my report! What was I supposed to do, _lie?”_

“Yes!”

Cassian interrupts, grinning slightly, “You wouldn’t have gotten very far looking like that, Jyn.”

“ _Looking like–_ ”

Kes leans over from where he’s sitting next to Jyn’s bed to give Cassian a high five. After Cassian had gotten out of bacta a day ago, he hadn’t let the nurse put him anywhere else except at Jyn’s side.

“You see, Erso? Cassian’s on my side,” Kes says smugly, crossing his arms and looking back over at her.

Jyn rolls her eyes. “Oh kriff off, both of you.”

“Hey, show some respect to your commanding officer!”

“I,” she responds smartly, “am not technically a part of the Rebellion, Kes Dameron.”

The offhandedness of her tone would make him think that she doesn’t care, but once glance at her face tells him otherwise. Jyn’s conflicted. Cassian knows that Mothma approached her before he got here with an offer, so either she hasn’t decided or she’s turned Mothma down.

He’s willing to bet on the former, considering how her eyes dart around the room before landing on him. He keeps his face blank; he doesn’t want to influence her decision, even if a selfish part of him wants her to stay within arm’s reach as much as possible.

( _is it really so wrong to not want to be alone anymore? to have someone else to share the burden with, who understands exactly what you’re going through?_ )

The two of them lock eyes, but it’s Jyn who breaks away first. She flushes and turns from him, fiddling with a loose thread on her blanket. Kes seems to notice something’s amiss–Cassian’s sure he’ll ask about it later–and cracks a joke to ease the tension.

“‘I am not technically part of the Rebellion, _sir_ ,’” he corrects her with a roguish grin. Jyn reaches out to smack him, but he scoots his chair closer to Cassian’s bed, just out of her reach.

“Just you wait, Dameron,” she threatens instead, leveling Kes with a glare. He doesn’t look intimidated in the slightest. “You are going to regret saying that bantha-shit.”

“Really?” Kes smirks, standing up and crossing his arms. Jyn narrows her eyes, wrenching her neck back to meet his gaze. “You can’t even leave your bed.”

“Watch me,” she responds hotly, then before Cassian can even open his mouth to stop her, she’s swinging her legs over the side of her bed and hoisting herself to his feet. She stands, albeit shakily, and even though Kes is more than a couple inches taller than her, he shrinks back slightly in surprise.

“Jyn,” Cassian says with exasperated fondness and a bit of worry, “please sit down before your knees give out.”

“They’re not going to give out,” she retorts boldly, which is a brave statement from someone who’s legs are quivering so badly she has to grip the bedpost to stay upright.

Kes and Jyn stare at each other for a moment longer before Jyn sinks back down onto her bed. Cassian sighs in relief–he would have gotten up, if needed, but his hip isn’t fully recovered from his stint on Dantooine and he, like Jyn, wants to get out of here as soon as possible.

“Thank you,” he says, resisting the urge to pinch the bridge of his nose.

Kes, like always, has to have the last word. “What did I tell you, Erso?”

Before Jyn can respond, Cassian interrupts with a sly smile, “Listen, a fight between the two of you right now wouldn’t be fair.”

“I can take him any day–”

He holds up a finger to cut her off. “Because,” he says slowly, “for it to be really fair, Jyn would need to have an arm behind her back.”

As Kes splutters out a protest, Jyn's grin splits her face. Cassian mirrors it, leaning back against his pillows and shooting her a thumbs-up.

( _he likes her smile. he thinks this is the first time he’s seen her really, truly smiling._ )

 

Healing is hard. They both know that.

And yet, here they are, both ignoring that fact.

 

“You make it look so easy,” Jyn complains, leaning heavily against the wall as she watches Cassian limp back and forth barely using the bars for balance. He’s not on crutches like she is. Instead, almost his entire leg is wrapped in a medical brace. Sweat beads across her forehead and her bangs stick to her face, but she makes no move to wipe it away. “It’s not fair. You’re–you’re cheating. _Somehow_.”

That makes him smile and duck his head to hide the redness on his cheeks. Happiness looks good on him, she decides. “You can’t cheat at physical therapy,” he chuckles, stopping to run a hand through his hair. “Besides, I wasn’t–” he falters, closes his mouth.

She knows that as a spy, he doesn’t slip up easily. She decides to take pity on him, a wry smile curling up at her lips, “Tortured? You can say it, Cassian. It’s fine.”

The nurse watching the two of them gives an alarmed squeak, before slapping her hand over her mouth and acting as if she hadn’t heard anything. Jyn and Cassian share a look before he turns to the woman. He doesn’t even have to say anything, just gives a small jerk of his head before she’s out the door and they’re left alone.

“It’s really not, Jyn,” Cassian breaks the silence. “You were on that Star Destroyer for what? A month? It’s okay if you’re not fine.”

“I’ve been tortured before,” she nearly snaps, trying and failing to make her tone light. “It’s nothing I haven’t experienced. I’m _fine._ ”

Cassian’s eyes are sad when he looks at her. She turns away, not wanting his pity. Since when has she allowed herself to be so weak? So incredibly vulnerable?

Saw, she thinks grimly, must be rolling his grave right now.

“You can't just brush this off and say you're fine,” he responds, but Jyn chooses not to answer and looks away, biting her lip. It’s not–they both know it’s not. Too bad she’s too prideful to admit it to him.

“You need to let yourself heal,” he tries again, his voice firm but gentle. “There are so many people here who would help you if you just _asked–_ ”

“Oh, like you’ve let yourself heal?” she sneers, crossing her arms over her chest. At his look of confusion, she elaborates. “Don’t think I haven’t noticed the dark circles underneath your eyes or the way you flinch at every loud noise, _Captain._ ”

It’s a low blow, and she knows it, but Cassian, kind and sympathetic Cassian, doesn’t rise to her bait. Instead, he murmurs, “You’re not going to be able to keep this up much longer. You don’t have to be alone anymore.”

 _That’s all I know how to be,_ she wants to scream at him but a bitter laugh works its way out of her throat instead. She meets his gaze and adds softly, “I just need to get my strength back. Once I do that, I’ll be fine. I can keep fighting.”

When he looks at her again, she has to fight to meet his gaze. His eyes are so, so sad–a complete opposite of how he had looked before she had brought up her imprisonment. “There’s more to life than just fighting, Jyn.”

Her mouth almost drops at the pure hypocrisy coming out of his mouth. She remembers how he had snapped at her on Eadu, only a couple weeks ago. _I’ve been in this fight since I was six years old._

( _she’s been in this fight since she was eight years old._ )

“Really?” Jyn replies hotly, narrowing his brows. “Maybe try telling me that again once you start believing it yourself.”

“Jyn–”

“I’m done,” she announces to no one in particular. “I’m done for the day.”

With that, she turns on her heel and leaves, not looking back. She doesn’t want to see the way Cassian looks at her. She doesn’t think her heart can stand it.

 

Cassian is released from the medical bay the next day. He goes to say goodbye to Jyn before he reports to Draven, but she’s rolled over on her side, not facing him.

The nurses shush him, saying that she’s sleeping. Cassian knows that she isn’t. Still, with one last look behind him, he leaves her alone.

( _what he doesn’t know is how tightly her fists are clenched underneath the sheets. when he leaves, she opens her hands._

 _the white sheets are stained red. saw would be ashamed of her weakness._ )

 

“Miss Erso, I was hoping I could talk to you for a couple of minutes.”

“It’s Jyn, your Highness,” she replies tiredly, pushing herself up on her elbows to get a better look at the princess, who’s standing at her bedside. “If you’re trying to recruit me, I already told Mothma I haven’t decided yet.”

Leia takes a seat next to Jyn’s bed with a gracefulness that Jyn knows she’ll never be able to master. She’s dressed in all white, the hood of her parka pulled up over her hair despite the warmth of the medical bay. The fur of her hood resembles a halo, and in this light, surrounded by sickness and pain, Leia almost looks like divinity.

It’s even more apparent next to the dark circles underneath Jyn’s eyes and the fading bruises on her exposed skin. Leia’s a princess, she’s royalty, she’s a high-ranking official in the Rebellion. Jyn’s–she’s what? A petty criminal who’s the daughter of an Imperial scientist? Next to Leia, she’s nothing. She’s nobody.

( _it doesn’t hurt much, knowing she isn’t much. she’s used to the feeling._ )

“Then it’s Leia,” the princess says delicately, folding her hands in her lap. “It’s nice to see you again, Jyn.”

Jyn raises her brows. “What?”

“It was a long time ago, it’s all right that you don’t remember,” Leia says, and Jyn sees something spark in her eyes that she can’t quite catch before Leia’s mask is back up. Fortunately for Jyn, she’s a lot easier to read than Cassian. Uncertainty flashes across her face. “It must have been ten or so years ago. Saw Gerrera came to make an agreement with my father. He introduced you as his daughter.”

Jyn bites her lip and resists the urge to look away. She _does_ remember. Remembers how Leia had stared at her across the table like she was a wild animal and remembers the way she used to wonder how her life would be different if the two of them had switched lives. “I–”

Leia continues. “You left before I could introduce myself, but I wanted to say something. Years later and I still don’t know what I would have done. There you were, a girl roughly my own age but–”

“I’m sorry, your Highness,” Jyn says bitterly, ignoring the disappointment that flashes across Leia’s face. “I can’t remember.”

“It’s quite all right,” Leia says, composing herself. Jyn knows, however, that the other woman is uncomfortable. She can see it in the way she has to brace herself to take a breath and in how stiffly she’s sitting in the chair. “I didn’t expect you to. How are you feeling, by the way? I wasn’t here when they brought you in, but I’ve read the reports.”

“I’m fine. You can tell Mothma that I’ll give her an answer once I get out of here.”

“Right.” Leia pauses, opens her mouth as if she wants to say something else, then shakes her head and closes it. “Feel better, Miss Erso,” she says formally, and Jyn ignores the way Leia's comment stings. The princess stands, acknowledges her with a slight tilt of her head before exiting the room, leaving Jyn alone with her thoughts.

 

Cassian punches the code for his room in almost angrily, running his fingers through his hair as he waits for his door to open. It’s late enough at night that the hallways are almost abandoned, which is a relief. He’s not in the mood right now for sentient interaction.

He doesn’t know why he’s so agitated–he’d spent most of the day training and rebuilding his strength. Draven, of course, hadn’t apologized for what had happened on Dantooine, though Cassian hadn’t expected him to. Instead, he’s not cleared for active duty until he passes a basic physical and mental test. He supposes that’s as close as Draven’s going to get to an apology.

And while it’s not ideal being confined to the base for a few more weeks, it’s better than doing nothing. There’s always paperwork–Stars, he _hates_ paperwork–and someone needs to do it. His talents could be put to better use, yes, but–

He throws his bag down on his bed, ignoring how his datapad slips out on impact. The brace on his leg is strapped so tight that it’s almost cutting off circulation, but he doesn’t dare remove it. As much as he loathes to admit it, he would barely be able to walk without it–and the last thing he needs right now is to go back on crutches.

( _he’d have to go back to the medical bay for that. he’d have to face jyn, and he’s too much of a coward to do that._ )

It shouldn’t bother him, but it does. He’d only known Jyn for a week before they had almost died on Scarif, so why should he care if she refuses everything except the most basic of treatments? Why should he care if she wants to do everything on her own? He barely knows her, for Force’s sake.

It’s just–

Stars, they had almost died together. They were _supposed_ to die together. And seeing her for the first time, days after she got out of captivity, with sunken cheeks and bruises around her neck, with an IV in the crook of her elbow and looking as if a strong wind would blow her over, he had wanted nothing more than to stay at her side.

But she had pushed him away with barbed words and thinly veiled insults, and if he were a weaker man he would have gone to her already. But she’s made it perfectly clear what she wants and he’s going to respect her decision.

( _he’s lived twenty-six years without jyn erso. it’s selfish of him to think that he can’t make it any longer without her now.)_

A resounding bang echoes through his quarters. Cassian flinches backwards and scrambles for his blaster with shaky hands before he realizes it’s only his datapad that’s fallen to the ground.

He swears softly in Festian and sets his blaster down on desk, wiping his hands on the front of his pants. His heart races, and it takes more than a couple deep breaths to slow it back down again.

( _maybe jyn’s not the only one who needs help._ )

As he reaches down to pick up his datapad, his comm crackles. “Captain Andor? Captain Andor, are you there?”

He sighs, wiping a tired hand over his eyes before he picks up his comm. Duty calls, as always. “I’m here.”

“There’s a situation in medical–” a shout, someone yelling his name, “we need you down here, sir, Miss Erso–she’s calling out for you–and she’s lashing out–”

_Jyn._

Before the message is complete, Cassian is already pulling on his boots and racing out the door.

 

_She’s on the Star Destroyer again, a guard on either side of her holding her back so she can’t run to the figure tied to the chair. The man’s head is bowed, his brown hair falling into his eyes so she can’t see his face. Blood drips from his nose onto his black pants and there’s a bruise blossoming on his right cheek, spreading all the way to his forehead._

_Krennic presses a knife to the man’s throat, jerking his chin up so the man is forced to look at Jyn. When she sees his face, her knees give out because it isn’t right, he shouldn’t be there, he should be dead, not trapped in a cell like her–_

_Cassian._

_“Tell me, Miss Erso,” Krennic croons, caressing Cassian’s throat with the blunt edge of the knife. A strangled cry breaks out of throat. This isn’t right this isn’t right this isn’t right–_

_“Where is the Rebellion’s headquarters?”_

_Cassian meets her eyes and gives the tiniest shake of his head, but she’s not going to let him die at the hands of the Empire–_

_“I don’t know!” she cries out, trying to wrestle herself free. Her shoulder is wrenched back uncomfortably but she doesn’t care. Tears prick her eyes and she wants to scream out of frustration. “I told you, I don’t know! Let him go. Please.”_

_“I need answers,” he says evenly, his calm demeanor the opposite of the anxiety she feels. He scraps the knife across Cassian’s throat, drawing blood. Cassian doesn’t make any noise, but he tightens his jaw at the pain._

_“Stop!” she sobs, her voice cracking. “I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you everything. Please, just stop.”_

_“Go on,” Krennic says, gesturing toward her with the knife._

_So she does. She gives him bits and pieces, half-truths and partial lies. She tells him she doesn’t know much because the Rebellion had locked her up, that they hadn’t trusted her enough to let her see the base. She doesn’t dare look at Cassian while she speaks, not wanting to see the disappointment in his eyes._

_(she’s doing this to save him.)_

_Krennic listens intently. Once she’s told him everything she knows, he raises an eyebrow. “Is that all?”_

_“It’s all I know,” she whispers, all of the strength drawn out of her. “I swear, that’s all I know.”_

_“Hmm,” is all he says, and Jyn can see it in his eyes that what she’d given him isn’t good enough. Desperately, she lurches forward, but Krennic only gives the smallest shake of his head before slitting Cassian’s throat._

_The guards at her side are gone and she rushes forward to catch Cassian before he falls to the ground. There’s so much blood staining the floor and Cassian’s clothes and her hands as she cradles Cassian to her chest but Krennic stands off to the side, all dressed in white without a drop of red on him._

_Cassian gasps, once, twice, blood squirting out of his neck that stains her face. His eyes dart around the room before settling on hers and he exhales slowly. He doesn’t take another breath and his eyes are glazed over and Jyn’s pressing her hands against the cut in his neck to try and stop the bleeding because if she can stop the bleeding then maybe he’ll be all right, he just needs bacta–_

_Someone is screaming. She thinks it might be her._

_“No, no, no, Cassian, you can’t die, you can’t leave me, you’re not supposed to be here, you’re not supposed to die–”_

“Jyn! Jyn. . .wake up!”

_Everyone she’s ever loved has been taken from her. She bows her head, her lips brushing against Cassian’s forehead oh so gently, whispering nonsense into his blood-caked hair._

_“It’s all right. You’re going to be all right, Cassian. I’ll take care of you, I promise, just trust me, okay? It’s all right.”_

“It’s. . .dream. Jyn, you’re dreaming!”

_She’s going to kill Krennic if it kills her._

She awakes with a gasps and blindly shoves off the arms that are holding her down. Sweat pours down into her eyes as she tries to sit up and get air into her lungs, but she can’t see, can’t breathe–

“Easy, easy! Jyn, it’s me! It’s Cassian,” Cassian’s face becomes the only thing in her line of sight and she anchors herself to it like a lifeline. He turns and shouts something behind him, and the room clears out until the only other person there is him.

“Cass–” she wheezes, a hand scrabbling up to her throat. “Cass–I can’t–I–”

“Shhh,” he soothes, brushing a piece of hair out of her face. His other hand goes to her stomach, warm and firm against the material of her gown. “You need to breathe, okay? You have to raise my hand with each breath you take, nice and easy. It’s all right. You’re safe, Jyn. You’re safe.”

He takes a deep breath and she tries to copy him, but her breaths are short and swallow. Her eyes dart around the room and she shifts on the bed, but Cassian guides her face back to his. “Easy, Jyn. There you go.” He stays with her the whole time, whispering words of encouragement and helping her breathe.  

( _he came back for her, even after everything she said. he always comes back for her._ )

“I’m fine,” she rasps out once she can breathe again. Her heart rate is still racing, but her vision isn’t darkening anymore. “I’m fine.”

Cassian barely moves from her side, just shifts so his leg isn’t hanging awkwardly off of the cot. Jyn moves to the side to give him more space. “What happened?” he whispers, meeting her gaze with soft eyes.

“It was nothing,” she replies softly, wishing she could be honest with him and knowing that she can’t. “I’m fine.”

“You’re not,” he argues, cupping her face with a hand. He brushes his thumb against her cheekbones, wiping away the tear tracks. She doesn’t pull away despite how close he is to her. It feels so right lying next to him, leaning into his warmth. She feels safe, something she hasn’t had the luxury to feel in a long time.

( _is it selfish of her to want this?_ )

“There was a boy. On the Star Destroyer,” she says instead. Cassian frowns, but accepts the change of subject. “He couldn’t have been older than nineteen.”

“Jyn. . .”

“His name was Cado Dravvad and he lived on Coruscant before coming to the Rebellion. He was a part of Intelligence. Did you know him?”

After a beat, he admits, “I did. I didn’t run any missions with him, but it was my job to know people.”

There’s a furrow between his brows that she wants to smooth away with her thumb. “I watched him die,” she says softly. “He died because I wouldn’t give Krennic any information about the Rebellion.”

Cassian knows what she’s thinking before she even has to say it. “It wasn’t your fault, Jyn,” he murmurs, as if he knows how heavy her heart is and how her shoulders dip under this burden. “You couldn’t save him. He knew the risk when he signed up.”

“It could have been you, Cass,” she says. He pulls her into his chest and she curls her fingers in the soft material of his shirt. “It could have been you on that Star Destroyer.”

“It wasn’t,” he replies, pressing a kiss to her damp hair, which still smells faintly of bacta. “I’m here, Jyn. I’m with you.”

After a couple minutes of silence, he makes to pull away as if to let her rest by herself. Jyn only tightens her grip in his shirt and pulls him back to her. “Stay,” she orders.

He does.

 

It’s hours later when he finally pulls away from Jyn and gets out of the bed as quietly as he can manage. She’s been sleeping peacefully for a while now and he hates to leave her alone like this, but he has to report to Draven in an hour.

Before he leaves, he brushes a piece of hair out of her eyes. When he walks out the door, he ignores the way his heart tugs, and he ignores the nausea rolling in his stomach.

It’s for the best, he tells himself.

_(but does he really believe that?)_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yeah so the thought process here was to put a happy scene at the beginning to cover up all the angst
> 
> and the meeting leia is referring to is from [this deleted comic scene](https://movieweb.com/rogue-one-comic-book-deleted-scenes-leia-jyn-erso/)
> 
> thank you all for reading/commenting/giving kudos! it means the world :-)


	7. Chapter 7

“I wanted to thank you,” the dark-haired woman says, sliding into the free chair next to Jyn’s bed. For someone who’s not officially a part of the Rebellion (yet, a small voice says in the back of her mind, not yet), she’s been getting an awful lot of visitors the past few weeks. “You’re the reason Kes–my husband–managed to get off the Star Destroyer.”

This must be Shara, then, the pilot that Kes had been talking about to try to keep her awake. She vaguely remembers a woman next to Kes when they had landed on Hoth, but couldn’t quite make out who it had been. Shara’s gratitude, though, is something she doesn’t deserve. “I can’t say I did much to help him.”

Shara shrugs. “You helped get him off that ship, so as far as I’m concerned you did quite a bit.” She pauses, then sticks out her hand to shake. “I’m Lieutenant Shara Bey. It’s nice to finally meet you.”

“Jyn Erso,” she responds, shaking the other woman’s hand. “Likewise.”

( _and just like that, they’re friends. she can’t help but marvel at how easy that was._ )

Shara leans forward, her elbows balanced on her knees. “Listen. How are you doing? And cut the ‘I’m fine’ bullshit. Be straight with me, Erso.”

It’s the straightforwardness of that statement that knocks Jyn speechless for half a second. “I’ve been better,” Jyn admits, “but I’ll be off of antibiotics tomorrow and I finished physical therapy this morning. The medics say I’ll be out of here in a couple of days.”

“Yeah, but how are _you_ doing?” Shara stresses. “I don’t kriffing care what the medics say. I want to hear it from you.”

Jyn mulls over that for a couple of seconds, then says with a self-deprecating smile, “I’ve been better.”

She’s lost Saw and her father, run a suicide mission on Scarif, then had gotten captured, tortured, and broken out of prison. This had all happened in the span of a couple weeks, everything back to back without any rest. She’s barely had time to catch her breath in between. Sure, her body’s mostly healed, but what about her mind?

 _(she hasn’t had time to grieve properly. at least locked in wobani, time was all she had._ )

Shara must see something in her face that forces a change of subject, because the other woman says abruptly, “How would you like to get out of here?”

Jyn raises a brow. It’s tempting, but unlikely. “I’ve tried every way I could think of to get out of here. If you’ve got any other ideas, let’s hear them.”

“Oh, I’ve heard all about them,” Shara waves her off, then leans in conspiratorially, “you just haven’t had the right partner in crime yet. Cassian would never put you in harm by breaking you out early–though he’s never had any problems doing that himself, mind you–and Kes is. . .he’s not subtle enough. So that’s where I come in.”

“All right,” Jyn says, nodding along. It’s true–Cassian hadn’t wanted her to leave when she had asked him to smuggle her out, and all of Kes’s plans involved big distractions that were bound to get the both of them caught. Hell, even if Shara’s plan doesn’t work, at least it gives her something to do. “Let’s do this.”

( _at this point, she’ll do anything to stop thinking so much. it’s dangerous for her to be left alone with her thoughts for so long._ )

“Can you get yourself out of bed?” Shara asks quietly. At Jyn’s nod, the other woman grins. “Okay. I’m going to go get a wheelchair.”

_“A wheel–”_

“You want to get out of here or not, Erso?”

“. . .Fine.”

Shara leaves, tugging the curtains around Jyn’s bed back into place as she goes. Jyn wastes no time in getting herself out of bed. She pulls the blankets off of her legs and turns herself. Her body is sore, though not as much as she thought it would be. Turns out the Rebellion hadn’t spared any expense on getting her healed. A hero’s privilege, she assumes, though what she’s done hasn’t been very heroic.

There’s an IV sticking out of the crook of her elbow, but she hesitates slightly before she pulls it out. The small bead of blood stands out on the paleness of her skin and she stares at it like in a trace. It’s a marvel, really, that she can even bleed anymore. With so much blood staining her hands red, it’s quite odd to see it anywhere else.

“You ready to go?”

Shara’s voice snaps her out of her thoughts. Jyn brushes away the blood with her thumb and turns to the other woman. “Of course I’m kriffing ready.”

( _they make it out of the medbay for about ten minutes before they’re tracked down by an angry team of nurses, but jyn doesn’t give a fuck about the inevitable consequences. for ten minutes, the weight on her shoulders hadn’t been so heavy._

 _back in the medbay, figuratively chained to her bed, it feels as burdensome as ever._ )

 

Sometimes, when he’s alone and his darker thoughts get the best of him, it feels as if he’s still Scarif’s only survivor.

Cassian hates himself every time he thinks it, but it’s true. He barely sees Jyn, despite trying to visit her in medical at least once a day. Their talks are stilted, awkward, and even with his  training in keeping up the most difficult of conversations (can’t afford to run out of ideas when talking to an Imperial officer), he finds himself excusing himself after a couple of minutes, or retreating behind a datapad so he won’t have to look her in the eye.

He doesn’t want to treat visiting her like a chore, but he doesn’t want to stop seeing her. He thinks– _he hopes_ –she feels the same, but her face is always as carefully blank as his is. Just as he thinks he’s going to figure her out, something changes and he’s forced to start over on page one again.

He has to remind himself that he barely knows her. She’s been on her own for the past seven years and doesn’t trust easily. It’ll take time for them to learn to trust each other– _”trust goes both ways”_ –but he doesn’t know if either of them have the time.

It’s a known truth that in the Rebel Alliance, you have to live each day as if it’s your last. A hard life, but a necessary one. He wishes that it didn’t have to be this way, wishes that he wasn’t Cassian Andor and she wasn’t Jyn Erso, and they were just two people who happened to meet in the middle of a war.

( _but would he even have it any other way? despite all of the pain and suffering the two of them have gone through in this universe, he’s cassian and she’s jyn and they’re going to get through this together._

 _they have to._ )

 

Cassian’s already sitting at a table when she arrives to the mess hall. She sneaks a glance at the chrono on the wall and lets out a sigh of relief. She’s only five minutes late, which isn’t unusual for her. Cassian’s the type to be right on time, and as she limps her way over to the table, she wonders how long he’s been sitting there alone for.

“Sorry I’m late,” she greets him, though both of them know she isn’t feeling very apologetic at all. Cassian only smiles, getting up from his seat to help her into the one across from him. She protests, taking a step back, “Cass, you don’t have to get up. I’m fine.”

After all, both of them have leg injuries. She shouldn’t be the priority, especially when he had been released from the medbay only about two weeks before her.

“Jyn,” he says softly, settling into back into his seat. His eyes flash with something she doesn’t think she wants to understand. “Just let me help you, okay?”

( _it almost seem as if he’s paying penance for the time she spent locked up._ )

She doesn’t say anything to that, instead choosing to grab the cup of caf in front of her. She raises it in a salute. “Here’s to finally being free of the medbay.”

“I’ll drink to that,” he responds, tapping his styrofoam cup against hers lightly before throwing it back like a shot.

Jyn does the same, but can’t finish all of it in one gulp. The caf is absolutely disgusting, but it’s hardly the worst she’s ever had. Still, she makes her opinion known. “You’d think the Rebellion would have better caf than this.”

“Whatever gets the job done,” Cassian responds wryly. “When there’s a war going on, good caf tends to be at the bottom of any priority list.”

Jyn chugs the rest of it, relishing the way it burns down her throat and settles warmly in her stomach. When she’s done, both her and Cassian fiddle with their empty cups absently, neither wanting to break the silence.

( _she wonders how it got like this. she wonders if it’s always been like this._ )

She cracks first. It makes sense–she’s not the spy. She’s sure that Cassian has been trained to sit through long silences like this. “I have to make my decision today. If I’m staying or not.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah,” she replies, staring down at the cup in her hands. For some reason, she doesn’t want to look him in the eye. “I was thinking I was going to go after this, actually.”

She glances up. Cassian is looking at her, eyes strangely warm as he offers, “I’ll walk you there?”

“That’d be nice.”

They fall into a silence again. It’s awkward, and Jyn fidgets uncomfortably in her seat. Just as she opens her mouth to say something else, Cassian cuts her off. “Have you decided what you’re going to do?”

“What would you do, in my place?” she counters, because she hasn’t. She’s no friend of the Empire but the Rebellion killed her father. She hadn’t done the mission on Scarif for anything except to avenge her papa and complete his final wishes.

Cassian smiles wryly, reaching out to cover her hands with his own. She flinches at the sudden contact, but doesn’t move away. She avoids his eyes, instead staring down at their joined hands. Her hands are scarred and calloused, with broken nails and bloody knuckles, but his hands are relatively unmarked, with only a couple scars here and there. She can feel the callouses on his palms, but they’re different, softer. They appear wholly intact compared to her broken ones.

_(maybe she’s not just comparing hands anymore.)_

“That’s not my choice to make.”

She knows exactly what he would choose. After all, he’s sitting across from her in a captain’s jacket right now. There’s no questioning that Cassian would have accepted seconds after Mothma had proposed it to him.

“Do you want me to stay?”

Cassian’s eyes widen slightly at the question. He opens his mouth, then closes, then opens it again to say, “I don’t want to influence your decision. If you’re going to stay, it should be because you believe in the cause, not because someone–not because _I’m_ here.”

That’s not the answer she wants to hear and he knows it. If he had told her that he does, that he wants her to stay, regardless of what he truly believes, she would have her decision already.

They’re the only two left alive. Doesn’t it make sense that she wants to stay by his side?

She’s a capable fighter and both of them know it. At the very least, she would be an asset to the Rebellion. He knows what it would take to recruit her and he’s never minded lying in the past. So what’s his deal now?

Maybe he doesn’t want to treat her like a regular recruit. Maybe she’s different. Maybe he’s thinking of her as a person, with her own feelings and emotions, instead of as an ability, or as a fighter, or as just another soldier.

( _she ignores the thought. she doesn’t want special treatment or anything like that._

 _she just wants him._ )

“Aren’t you a recruiter?” she shoots back. His answer stings, but she doesn’t want him to know it. “You’re supposed to be good at this stuff, yeah?”

“Jyn, you know this is different,” he runs a hand through his hair. “ _You’re_ different.”

( _but why does it make her so uncomfortable to know that maybe, just maybe he feels the same way?_ )

She takes her hands out from underneath his and settles them in her lap. Like earlier, she can barely look him in the eye. “Let’s get going,” she says woodenly. “Wouldn’t want to keep Mothma waiting.”

“Mothma’s not going to mind if you take a few extra minutes to decide.”

He’s right–Mothma wouldn’t care. And it’s not like she knows what she’s going to do anyway. But sitting here, talking around the issue and neither of them having enough courage to say what they want to say, is something she doesn’t think she can do for much longer.

She stands up, wobbles a bit on her unsteady ankle. Cassian rises immediately to steady to her, but she bats his hands away and grips her chair instead. “I’m fine, Cass. Really.”

“You’re not–”

“Captain Andor?”

Cassian swears softly and turns away from her to face the recruit. “Yes?”

“Draven’s requested your immediate presence in his office, sir.”

The girl salutes, then leaves the two of them in peace. Jyn locks her jaw and looks away from him. “You should go,” she says.

“It’ll only take a few minutes,” he replies softly. “Hey, Jyn, look at me.” He places a gentle hand on her cheek and turns her head to meet his gaze. She doesn’t resist. “I’ll be right back and we can walk together to meet Mothma, okay?”

“You don’t have to come back for me,” she insists, even though she knows it’s futile. He’s not one to leave her behind–he hadn’t on Jedha or Eadu, and he had her back after the Council meeting. “Just–just go. It’s fine.”

“You’re right,” he agrees. “I don’t have to. But I want to, okay? Just. . .” he looks around for a second, lets his hand fall from her cheek. She misses its warmth against her skin; Hoth is so, so cold. “Stay here. I’ll be back in twenty minutes, max. I promise I’ll be back.”

“Okay,” she nods, once, twice, maybe more than necessary. She doesn’t want to know what kind of emotions flash on her face as she speaks. “Okay. I’ll be here.”

He smiles at that as she sinks back into her chair, holding her empty cup of caf for lack of anything better to do with her hands. He leaves then, turning on his heel and leaving her alone in the mess hall.

So Jyn waits. What else is she supposed to do?

 

The walk to Draven’s office in a practice in self-restraint. The entire time, all he wants to do is turn around and go back to Jyn, despite having a direct order from his superior officer. He had seen the uncertainty in her eyes during their conversation and as much as he wanted to sway her decision, it’s something that she has to decide on her own. He respects her too much to try and manipulate her into joining.

( _but he cares for her too much for her to try to stay out of it completely._ )

Stars, he wishes she had the kind of drive he does for the Rebellion. Even if they couldn’t be together, he would at the very least be able to see her sometimes, and make sure she’s safe. He’s not saying that Jyn can’t take care of herself, because he _knows_ that she can. He’s seen her in action and she doesn’t need anyone, least of all him, to protect her.

It’s for him. He’ll feel better if he knows that she’s with the Rebellion instead of on her own.

He knocks twice on Draven’s door then takes a step back, hands clasped behind his back in the perfect soldier’s parade rest. When Draven opens the door, he snaps into a crisp salute, despite the pain that jolts through his back at the sudden action. “You wanted to see me, sir?”

“At ease, Captain Andor,” Draven replies, stepping aside for Cassian to enter in his office. As Cassian moves to take a seat across from Draven’s desk, Draven sinks in the chair on the other side. “I’ve read the briefing about your latest mission.”

“Yes, sir,” he nods. “It was a success, despite some small difficulties. Nothing Private Halos and I couldn’t handle though, sir. We got the data out with only minor injuries and I turned it into Command on our return, then reported to medical.” _Although you already know that, considering I placed it in your hand when we landed._

“Hmm. Yes,” Draven muses, then leans forward. He props his elbows up on his knees when he speaks. “How is your leg, Captain?”

“It’s fine, sir,” Cassian lies smoothly, resisting the urge to shift in his chair. Truth is, it’s aching right now. “The medics tell me it’s healing nicely.”

“Despite what the medics say, I think it’s clear that you’re not ready to go out into the field yet. I can see that it still pains you.”

Cassian frowns, furrowing his brow. There’s no point in trying to hide it, not from an experienced spy sitting across from him. “Sir?”

“Your comments on Private Halos were very insightful,” Draven continues, seemingly unaware of Cassian’s confusion, but he knows it’s simply a tactic of Draven’s. The change of subject is effortless. “Care to elaborate, Captain?”

“Private Halos is good in the field, sir,” Cassian says slowly, uncertain as to where this conversation is going. “She’s efficient and thorough, even when compromised. She’s an Imperial defector, but now that that’s out in the open, it’s no longer should be an issue. I believe that a long term undercover mission would be best for her. She’s better at blending in plain sight than sneaking around. A change in identity would also make it more difficult in being recognized again, sir.”

Draven nods, leaning back in his chair. “I’ll keep your thoughts in mind, Captain.”

It’s silent for a couple of minutes. Draven thumbs through something on a datapad, ignoring the way how Cassian watches him. Cassian knows that he’s the one who has to make the first move, so he says, “Is that all, sir?”

“Nobody lives very long in this line of work, Captain,” he replies after a beat. “You know this. I’m long past my time and you’re one of my best agents.”

Cassian takes a breath, then releases it slowly. He thinks he now knows where this is going. “Sir–”

“With your injuries, it’s unlikely that you’ll be cleared for anything other than basic field work. And yet, I’ve seen what you given to the Rebellion. You’re not going to let a couple of broken bones keep you down, hmm? How would you feel about a promotion, Captain?”

 

“Force–that’s Jyn Erso, isn’t it?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. Pretty sure that Captain Andor was the only one who came back from Scarif alive.”

“No, Tav saw her brought in her a couple of weeks ago on a stretcher. She was with Sergeant Dameron, I think. That’s got to be her.”

“Were you even there when she gave her speech to the Council?”

“No, but–”

“It’s not her. Tav is always making up stories to impress you. Remember when she claimed she had been scratched by a wampa but had actually been cut while she was trying to fix her shuttle?”

“I mean, yeah, but I’m pretty sure that’s Erso sitting over there. Wait, you think Tav’s trying to impress me? Do you think she likes me?”

“Don’t be an idiot–of course she does! And the whole Erso thing doesn’t matter, anyway. She looks pissed and we have to go to training.”

“You think she heard us?”

“It’s not even her. Stop worrying, Ami. If we have to run extra laps because you made us late, I’m going to kill you.”

 

All of his thoughts rush out of his head when Cassian breathes out, letting his eyes flutter shut for a second. He doesn’t focus on Jyn, or on his injuries, or on how bloody cold Hoth is. The only thing running through his brain is Draven’s words.

There’s a part of his mind that knows it will be close to impossible to go back into the field, but he’s disappointed to hear it nonetheless. He’s spent the better part of the past twenty years doing field work and a future not being able to do that doesn’t sound like one he’s interested in.

But if he has no other choice–

“You’re promoting me?” he says hoarsely. “For what?”

Draven doesn’t even comment on his lack of formalities. “You’re an exceptional soldier, Cassian. Minus a few exceptions, you’ve always followed orders. If anyone deserves a promotion, it’s you.”

That doesn’t answer his question. Letting out a shaky laugh, Cassian runs his fingers through his hair. “Right–I–”

“You don’t need to decide now, Cassian,” Draven interrupts smoothly, folding his hands neatly in front of him. “Just get back to me before the end of the day.”

There really isn’t a choice, is there? If he can’t go out in the field anymore, then why would he force himself to sit around and do paperwork for the rest of his life? At least when working with Draven he’ll have input in field missions instead.

( _it’s the best option he has right now. they both know it. and they both know what he’s going to decide._ )

“No, I want it,” he replies after a beat, then adds belatedly, “sir.”

“Congratulations on your promotion, Major Andor,” Draven replies, a small smile creeping over his face. “It will be announced officially tomorrow.”

“Thank you, sir,” Cassian says, standing up from his chair. Draven holds out a hand to stop him. Cassian furrows his brow, “Sir, I have–”

He has to get back to Jyn. He made a promise to walk her to Mothma’s, and he’s not going to break it.

“Just a few more things, Major,” Draven says, and Cassian sits, albeit with guilt churning in his gut. “It won’t take long.”

He could, very easily, ignore Draven’s orders and go to Jyn. But he’s already gone rogue once and now that he’s been promoted–well, the Rebellion has to come first.

( _it always does._ )

He only hopes that Jyn can forgive him for being a little late.

 

Jyn waits.

She waits, and waits, and waits.

She watches recruits come and go, tracking their progress lazily as she eavesdrops on their conversations, resisting the urge to get up and smack sense into some of them.

The Rebellion isn’t a game, she wants to tell them. Good people have fought and died for the cause. This is not an opportunity to become a hero–it isn’t _glorious_ to be a soldier.

( _she knows that first hand._ )

So she waits, fists clenched around her coffee cup, and tries not to draw attention to herself.

Cassian doesn’t come back.

She watches the chrono on the wall, watches how the hours tick by, and tries to make excuses for Cassian. Maybe he got caught up by Draven. Maybe there’s an urgent matter he needs to attend to. But as she sits there, alone, she finds it harder and harder to be patient.

Cassian doesn’t show up. He leaves her sitting alone in the middle of the mess, to be ridiculed like some animal in a cage–

No. It’s fine. She’s fine.

Why is she so upset? She shouldn’t be upset. It’s not really that big of a deal. The Rebellion comes first. It always does. And she understands that, she really does, it’s just–

Force, she’s really, _really_ kriffing sick of being the second choice.

Whatever. It’s her own fault, really, for believing that maybe, just maybe, she could be the priority. It’s such a silly little thing, walking her to Mothma’s office, but he had promised and he’s not here and she’s alone. It’s not like Cassian left her all alone in a cave with a blaster and a pack of rations and told her he’d be back when it’s safe. He didn’t abandon her like Saw had but it stings all the same.

( _she’s quickly learning that the only person who’ll put her first is herself._ )

She knows for a fact that a small promise can turn into something much larger. Galen’s promise– _”whatever I do, I do it to protect you”_ –had turned into him abandoning her for fifteen years only to die in her arms. Saw’s promise– _”I will always protected you, my child”_ –had turned into him leaving her alone in a bunker after eight years of being her foster father.

Cassian’s promise– _“I’ll walk you there?”_ –is going to turn into what, exactly? She doesn’t plan on sticking around long enough to find out.

As she pushes herself up from the table, she doesn’t know why her eyes are watering. She dashes away the tears with the back of her hand angrily and clenches her jaw so hard it creaks. It’s fine. She’s fine. She shouldn’t have gotten her hopes up for some silly little _walk._

( _stars, when did she get so weak? is it the waiting that bothers her, or the fact that she's getting closer and closer to cassian she can't help but push him away?_ )

So Jyn does what she does best when she feels like this, caged in and powerless. She runs.

The walk to Mothma’s office is brief. When she nearly barrels down the door, the Senator only raises an eyebrow and beckons her in, as if she had been expecting her. “Ah, Miss Erso. Come in.”

“Senator,” Jyn acknowledges, then cuts to the chase. She’s never been one for simple pleasantries. The decision is easy now that it feels as if a vice is gripping her heart. “I’ve made my decision. I want out. You promised at the beginning of this that if I did what you asked, my name would be cleared and I’d have a ride out of here, yeah? I’m leaving.”

“Are you quite sure?” Mothma leans forward, looking slightly alarmed. It’s clear that the senator had expected her to stay. Still, Jyn grits her teeth and turns her head, not wanting to meet Mothma’s eyes. “You’re a capable fighter, Jyn. The Rebellion would benefit from having you on our side.”

“I’m not friend of the Empire’s,” Jyn replies evenly, jerking her chin upwards, “but the Rebellion has done _nothing_ for me or my family. This–” she shakes her head. “This is not something I want to be apart of.”

Her father’s face as he dies flashes in her mind. She clenches her fists and tries not to remember the pain in his eyes. That had been the Rebellion’s fault.

( _even cassian had almost killed him._ )

Jyn thinks she sees a flash of disappointment in Mothma’s eyes, but the other woman nods nonetheless. “Very well. You’ll have your ship. I’ll make preparations for the morning.”

“No,” Jyn argues. “I want to leave now. I don’t care where I go or who I fly with, I just need to leave.” Her voice cracks on the last note. She swallows, trying to regain her composure.

Mothma raises her brows. For a moment, Jyn thinks she’s going to deny her, but then she says, “General Solo is flying out tonight to Coruscant. I can tell him to expect company, if you’d like?”

“That’s fine,” Jyn bites out. She turns on her heel, pauses with a “thank you” on her lips, but she doesn’t say it. The Alliance doesn’t deserve her thanks. They never have and they never will.

She nods to herself once, then raises her chin high. With as much dignity as she can muster up, she limps out of Mothma’s office and heads to the hangar bay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter was really difficult for me to write. i'm not sure why, but i'm still not 100% happy with the result. maybe it's bc it was supposed to be the ending of the last chapter but i decided to split it into two. who knows? i don't know what else to do with it so here y'all go lmao i hope you enjoy it nonetheless
> 
> EDIT: knocked chapters back down to 10 now that I have most of chapter 8 written and a clear vision of how I’m ending the fic
> 
> finally, thank you all again so much for reading! i really appreciate it :-)


	8. Chapter 8

Han Solo is waiting for her in the hangar bay. Jyn doesn’t know exactly what he looks like, but the wookie and the piece of shit ship–that she had last seen Lando Calrissian piloting–behind him only confirm her assumptions.

He swaggers up to her, hands in his pockets, and makes no move hiding how he looks her up and down. She crosses her arms over her chest defensively. “You must be Erso,” he says finally, meeting her gaze. “And you’re late.”

“Wasn’t aware I was supposed to meet you at a certain time,” she replies hotly, puffing out her chest to make herself look taller.

“Hmph,” is all he replies. “I was supposed to leave ten minutes ago. You’re holding me back, kid.”

“If you have an issue, take it up with Mothma,” she mutters, pushing Solo aside so she can get to his ship. He snags her wrist with his arm and forces her to spin around. “What now?”

“You’re a lot shorter than I imagined,” he muses, tugging her closer to him. She rips her arm out of his grip with a snarl, but he only holds his hands up with a grin. “How’d someone your size manage to steal the Death Star plans?”

She takes a step toward him, waves her finger in his face, which makes him smirk. “Your ego’s just as large as I imagined, Solo,” she snaps, poking him in the chest. With that, she spins on her heel and turns away, and he doesn’t stop her.

“Don’t go messing with any of my things, kid!” he hollers after her, and Jyn makes a note to steal the first bottle of booze she comes across. If Solo’s going to act like this the entire trip, there’s no way in hell she’s going to make it through sober.

There hadn’t been a need for her to go back to her temporary room before coming to the hangar bay. She doesn’t have anything that belongs to her right now–the clothes on her back are Rebellion issued and her kyber crystal is long gone, taken by Krennic when he had captured her. Just thinking about his creeping fascination with her family leaves a sick feeling in her stomach.

( _when she sees him again, she is going to rip him apart, limb by kriffing limb._ )

The wookie growls at her when she approaches the ship and extends a hand. Solo is hot on her heels, opening his mouth to presumably translate, but Jyn cuts him off and says, “I’m Jyn Erso. Nice to meet you.”

Solo looks gobsmacked, jaw dropping while Chewbacca lets out a celebratory roar, clapping her on the back with a little more force than necessary. “You can understand him?”

“Some,” she admits, speaking over her shoulder as she walks up the ramp to the Falcon. She doesn’t remember exactly where she learned it. There had been a wookie she had smuggled with for a time on the Outer Rim, so she suspects she had learned a little from her. “Live on your own long enough you start to pick up a few things. And close your mouth, Solo, or you’ll catch flies.”

The interior of the Falcon is considerably nicer than the outside, but that doesn’t improve her opinion of the ship. It’s a means to an end, not her home for the next couple of years. Once Solo drops her off, she’ll be free of the Alliance.

( _and cassian. she ignores the way that makes her stomach drop._ )

“Well, go make yourself comfortable,” Solo says with his hands on his hips and following her through the cargo bay as if he’s unsure what to do with her. She wonders just how many missions he’s flown with someone other than Chewbacca. “Chewie and I have to finish the preflight checks and then we’re out of here.”

He pauses in the doorway to the cockpit, then says, “Just what kind of business do you have in Coruscant, kid?”

“Nothing important,” she replies evenly, sinking onto a bench in the corner of the cargo bay. She stretches out of her throbbing ankle in front of her. “Don’t you have a ship to fly, Solo?”

“It’s ‘sir,’ actually,” he says offhandedly, leaning up against a wall. “Pretty sure I outrank you, Erso.”

She leans her head up against the wall and closes her eyes, the picture of indifference despite the churning in her gut. “Does it matter? I’m not a part of this kriffing Rebellion.”

Solo snorts and turns away. Once she hears his footsteps leave the room, she cracks open an eye to make sure she’s alone, then leans forward and rests her heavy head in her hands.

Is this the right decision?

Perhaps she had been too hasty. Maybe she could stay one more night, let Cassian explain and convince her to stay, to _seduce_ her to both the cause and–

A sharp stab of pain lances through her ankle when she tries to stand, grounding her thoughts back into reality. There’s no place for her in the Rebellion, not after what they’ve done to her and her family, and there’s no love for daughters of Imperial scientists in the Alliance. There’s nothing for her on Hoth–there’s _no one_ here for her on Hoth.

( _but does she really believe that?)_

Krennic had said that Vader had wanted to interrogate her himself, so she can only assume that the Star Destroyer she escaped from had continued on to Coruscant after she escaped. It’s likely that Krennic’s been punished for her absence, but if she’s lucky, he’s high-ranking enough that Vader would have let him live despite the mistake.

If she’s lucky, then she’ll finally have her revenge.

It’s a small chance, at best. She knows what Vader does to those who’ve failed him, but if he’s alive, she’ll stop at nothing to kill him herself. Her parents deserve to be avenged. Krennic deserves to die. She clenches her hands into fists, nails biting into her palms.

If she dies too, so be it.

( _she hopes they won’t tell cassian, when she’s gone. she hopes they’ll save him the pain._ )

After that, she doesn’t know what she’ll do. Becoming Liana or Tanith or Kestrel again isn’t an option, and Jyn Erso is bound to have just as many enemies as her other aliases do. She’ll have to start over and make a new life for herself. Maybe she’ll take up smuggling again, or head towards Takodana to see if Maz and any other of the Partisans had survived. If she can manage to survive, it seems as if her possibilities are endless.

( _except, of course, staying and fighting with the rebellion._ )

It should comfort her, knowing that she can do practically anything. But for some reason, for some kriffing reason, it feels as if there’s a blade been driven oh so slowly right through her heart.

 

Draven keeps him longer than Cassian wants, but there’s nothing he can do unless he wants to go against his superior officer. He’s gone rogue once already, and Draven’s warned him of the consequences if he does it again. If he’s to break the rules, it’s going to for a damn good reason.

( _he’d break the rules to save jyn in a heartbeat._ )

As soon as Draven dismisses him, he’s headed back toward the mess hall to find Jyn. A quick glance at a nearby chrono tells him that he’s desperately late, so he hastens his stride despite his aching leg. But when he gets to their table, Jyn is gone.

“Stars,” he hisses out, running his fingers through his hair. He glances about the mess, before walking out. She must have gone to Mothma’s without him–Force, he remembers the look on her face when they had talked and he can only assume the worst–

Maybe he can beat her there and try to convince her otherwise. But even as he starts to hurry, he knows that even with her ankle, Jyn’s still much faster than he is in this condition. It’s possible he can catch her on her way out. If he can, he can escort her to her rooms or–or he can escort her to the hangar bay. Either way, he’s going to walk her somewhere.

( _this is all in the situation that he finds her before she leaves. if she’s leaving._

 _he thinks that maybe she will._ )

“Major Andor–”

“Not now, your Highness,” he blurts out, still moving forward despite the hand wrapped around his arm. He barely looks in her direction despite her higher status. “I have to be somewhere right away–”

“You’re looking for Jyn Erso,” she says, eyes blazing. It’s not a fact.

He stops, turns to face her. “How–”

“I can tell,” she replies offhandedly, waving a hand absently in his direction. “I’ve seen you look at her the same way Luke looks at Wedge.”

Interesting. He files away that development, then asks cautiously, “So you and Han–”

She shoots him a look so deadly he shuts his mouth immediately, then starts pulling him in the other direction. Cassian doesn’t resist, just picks up his pace. “Han was complaining that he had an extra passenger on his flight to Coruscant on Mothma’s orders. Some war hero, he said,” Leia rolls her eyes, tugging him forward again. “That scruffy nerfherder wouldn’t know a war hero if one slapped him in the face!”

“Your Highness,” he tries, pulling his arm out of her grip gently. He thinks he knows where this is going. “If you know something about Jyn. . .”

“Point is, she’s in the hangar bay right now,” she replies. “So let’s get a move on before the Falcon takes off, hmm?”

Cassian shoots her a sideways look, mouth tugging upwards in amusement. He didn’t realize just how much he missed this, bickering and all. And despite the time constraint, he can’t help but quip as they hurry down the hallway, “You do realize that my leg isn’t exactly, ah, up to Alliance standards right now, yes?”

“Please,” she scowls. “If there’s anyone you’d break your leg running to, it’s Jyn Erso.”

“I’d break my leg for you, your Highness,” he offers with a slight chuckle, but she just pushes him forward into the hangar bay with exaggerated exasperation.

“Go,” she urges, and he needs no further motivation to jog out toward the Falcon. “I’ll distract Han while you talk to Jyn.” By distract, Cassian knows she means start an argument, but he’s not going to look a gift horse in the mouth, even if it’s going to end up in what’s likely to be an explosive fight.

“Jyn!” he calls out, not caring who hears him. She’s not outside the ship, so he goes up the ramp to look for her on the inside. That’s where he finds her–sitting in the cargo bay with her head in one hand, and a bottle of rum dangling from her fingers in the other.

“Solo, I swear–” she looks up, glaring, then falters. Her eyes widen in shock, and her mouth opens and then closes, then opens again to say incredulously, “Cassian? What the hell are you doing here?”

“I’m sorry I couldn’t walk you to Mothma’s,” he says, taking a step closer. Jyn shoots up to her feet, so he holds his hands up and stops, approaching her as if she were a wounded animal. She certainly looks like one, hands balled up into fists, jaw clenched and looking away from him, dark bags underneath her eyes. He stops, looks around the ship and then nods, once. “You’re leaving.”

She bites her lip, still not looking at him. He can still see the uncertainty in her eyes. “I–I’m sorry,” she blurts out, meeting his gaze. “I should have–”

He shakes his head. “No, Jyn, you don’t have to apologize. It was your decision to make.” A decision that leaves his gut sinking, but her decision nonetheless. “I just. . .I wanted to say goodbye.” He flounders, takes a step back towards the ramp. “Before you, ah, left. That’s all.”

The sounds of the princess and Solo arguing can be heard even inside the Falcon, but neither of them pay it any mind. “Goodbye,” she manages, jerking her chin upwards as if to make herself look bigger. If Cassian’s vision isn’t mistaken, there’s something shining in her eyes. “Goodbye, Cassian.”

“Right,” he says back, though takes a step forward despite his words. This is all he came to do, and yet he can’t seem to make himself leave the Falcon. Instead, he searches for words, for the right thing to say to her, but only manages to repeat himself. “Right.”

( _why the hell can’t he say what he really wants to tell her?)_

“You should go,” she says softly, eyes trained on the floor. “Wouldn’t want to miss any important Rebellion business, yeah?”

He can’t hear Solo and Leia anymore, and he has a sinking suspicion that Han is going to walk up the ramp any second, so Cassian panics, blurting out, “Or you could stay.”

Jyn freezes, her head snapping up and her eyes finding his. She looks alarmed, eyes wide and mouth slightly open. “What?”

“Just for the night,” he amends quickly, holding up his hands once again. “You don’t have to, but–”

“Cassian. . .” she pauses, bites her lip. Uncertainty flashes in her eyes. “I. . .”

“If you still want to leave, I’ll fly you out myself tomorrow,” he promises, even though he knows Draven will never allow it. Still–it’s for Jyn. One last act of rebellion, right?

“Okay,” she says, nodding too quickly for it to look natural. Her easy acceptance startles him, though it shouldn’t have, not with the way she’s been acting. “Just for the night.”

“You can stay in my room,” he offers quietly, still not wanting to scare her off. She looks uncertain, but still takes a step forward. “I don’t have any roommates, and–I have my own ‘fresher. Officer perks.”

“Say no more,” she says, smiling hesitantly. He wonders when she’s last taken a hot shower, especially one with real water. “I’m in.”

“All right,” Cassian replies, for lack of anything else to say. There’s something to be said about an Intelligence officer who can barely talk to another soldier without fumbling. “Let’s get going, then.”

( _though, if he’s being honest, jyn’s not just another soldier._ )

As they walk out of the cargo bay together, Solo walks up the ramp, hands jammed in his pockets and whistling. He pauses when he sees them, head snapping first to Jyn and then to him. “So you’re leaving, kid?” he demands, whirling back on her. “After you’ve made me late and everything?”

Cassian opens his mouth to retort, but Jyn’s got it covered. “Thanks for the rum, Solo,” she calls over her shoulder instead, still walking forward and holding the bottle above her head like a trophy. As Solo splutters something unintelligible behind them, she turns to the wookie and says, “See you around, Chewie.”

The wookie roars back, but Cassian can’t understand him. As they make their way out of the hangar bay, he makes a mental note to learn Shyriiwook.

 

Jyn perches on his bed uncomfortably, while he leans up against the desk across from her. She doesn’t hide the way she looks him over–the hunched shoulders and bruised eyes make her wonder when he slept last. She folds farther inward on herself, realizing that some of this strain, some of the weight on his shoulders is because of _her._

The bottle she'd stolen from Solo hangs from her hands. She looks at it absently, then sets it gingerly on the floor next to the bed. For some reason, she really doesn't feel like drinking anymore.

His room is cleared of personal effects, though she hadn’t expected any. It’s clean and organized, almost sterile. It looks as if it has barely been lived in, making her wonder just how much Cassian uses it. There’s a door in the corner which must lead to the ‘fresher he promised, and a small desk pushed up against the wall across from the bed. The desk is covered in both datapads and paper files, but they’re stacked in neat, meticulous piles. Besides the bed, desk, and chair, the only other thing in the room is a pair of crutches, propped up on the wall near the door. In the time she’s spent on Echo Base, she hasn’t seen him use them once. Numbly, she realizes they’re probably from his post-Scarif recovery.

( _if they had been together, if they had healed together, things between them probably would be a lot different right now._ )

“I’m sorry,” he says bleakly, running his hand through his hair. “I broke my promise. I kept you waiting and I should have come sooner. It’s just–”

Jyn shakes her head, wrapping her arms across her stomach protectively. There’s a sudden, phantom pain from the vibroblade scar on her stomach. “I get it. The Rebellion comes first to you. It always has, and it always will.”

“Don’t, Jyn,” he mutters, taking a step closer to her. She sees the anguish flashing in his eyes, and guilty, she turns away. “Don’t go there.”

“Why not?” she snaps, narrowing her eyes. “It’s the truth. We both know it.”

“I’ve given my whole life to the Rebellion!” he grits out, voice rising on each note. She thinks this is the closest he’s ever gotten to yelling in front of her. “There is _nothing_ left for me other than this. The Rebellion comes first–it comes first because it’s all I have.”

“It doesn’t have to be that way! Cassian, you have me. You’ll always have me, I just–I–”

She just what? Decided to abandon him? Stars, it’s always about her, isn’t it? She forgets, sometimes, that the world doesn’t revolve around her. She takes and takes and takes because she’s so used to receiving nothing that she doesn’t know what to do when she takes too much.

Cassian’s kindness, for example.

( _maybe she deserves to be abandoned._ )

“You tried to leave, Jyn,” he says bitterly, throwing up his hands. “If I hadn’t made it to the hangar bay in time, you’d be in hyperspace right now. And I’m not trying to convince you to stay–that’s a decision you have to make. But don’t say that I have you when that’s clearly not the truth.”

It couldn’t be closer to the truth.

“Cass,” she cuts in, voice heavy, “don’t. Don’t please. You–” she breaks off, clenches her fists in her lap. She wants to punch something; her fingers flex unconsciously. “Force, the two of us–we’re really something, aren’t we?”

“Yeah,” he laughs, albeit it shakily. It breaks the mood from earlier, and he joins her on the bed. They don’t touch, but the small amount of empty space between them is charged with a tension she doesn’t want to identify. “Yeah, we really are.”

“I tried to leave,” she starts, choking on her words, “because I was afraid. Cassian–what I feel for you–” she exhales, unable to put it into words. “It scares me because it’s been a long time since I’ve felt that way.”

Cassian fills in the blanks so she doesn’t have to, his voice devoid of any emotion. “So when I was late, you left me before I could leave you.”

“I’m sorry,” she breathes out. “It’s such a small thing, being late, but I used it as an excuse. You hadn’t done anything, but running is all I know how to do.” Her voice cracks, but she continues. She owes him this. “I was afraid and I ran at. . .at the first sign you–”

He puts her out of her misery then, drawing her closer to him by wrapping an arm around her shoulder. She leans into his embrace, wiping tears out of her eyes with the back of her free hand. “Promises like that. . .promises saying you’re here and that you’ll never leave me–Saw, and my father. . .”

“Jyn,” he says softly, pulling her in tighter. His thumb strokes small circles into her arm. “I can’t promise I’ll never leave you. There’s too many variables, especially in my line of work,” he sighs heavily, rubbing his forehead with his free hand.

“I don’t expect you to,” she’s quick to interrupt. That’s not the point of this, to drag empty promises out of him. All she wants is to explain. “Cassian–”

“Shhh,” he shushes her, though not unkindly. “But I can promise that I won’t leave you if I have a choice. I’d go against orders to come back for you, I’d. . .” he smiles at a joke only between the two of them, “I’d go rogue again for you. I’m with you, remember?”

“I can’t ask you to promise that,” she whispers, bowing her head. If he promises that, then he’ll break it. Despite all of the times he’s come for her, it’s just what she knows–broken promises, abandonment, living a life where the only one person she can trust is herself.

( _it’s a sad way to live, but at least she’s alive. but she doesn’t think she wants to live that way anymore._ )

“Then trust me,” he says simply, reaching over to tilt her chin up and meet his eyes. “Trust me when I say that I’ll always do my best to come back for you.”

“Trust goes both ways,” she murmurs, nodding in agreement. The last time she had said those words to him, it had been under considerably different circumstances. “I can do that,” she replies softly, then adds, “And trust me not to run. If you stay–I’m not going to leave.”

“I trust you,” he replies, in the same tone of voice. “And I–I don’t do this, normally. I’ve never done it with anyone.” He laughs self-consciously, turning his head to hide the flush creeping up his cheeks. “But I’d like to try. With you. I don’t think I could–the way I feel about you, Jyn, I can’t lose you.”

Her heart flips in her chest. She blinks, then gapes at him slightly. Despite the obvious signs she’s been ignoring, it’s almost relieving to hear him say it out loud.

“I’d like that,” she says softly. He turns his face back towards her, smiling softly, then presses a small kiss to the top of her head. “I don’t normally do this either. You know, getting close to other people.” She shifts closer to him, ignore her impulse to distance herself. “But I’d like to try it with you too.”

( _she’s never done anything more than a quick fuck in an alleyway. it should scare her, the thought of loving someone and potentially losing them, but it doesn’t. instead, the anxiety that’s been filling her gut ever since she got here suddenly evaporates._ )

This almost reminds her the time she had tried to build some sort of puzzle with her father. She’s never been the most patient, and that had been apparent in her inability to finish the puzzle in one sitting. When she had come back to it, a lot of the pieces had been missing, leaving gaping holes in what was supposed to be a complete image.

What she’s feeling now–it’s as if Cassian’s one of those lost pieces. She’s not completely fixed, there’s still holes and missing parts, but something inside of her has been filled through both her confession and her admission of her feelings.

She thinks she’s finally beginning to heal.

“Does that mean you’re going to stay tonight?” Cassian says softly, hesitantly, looking at her as if she’s about to run. His grip around her shoulder tightens ever so slightly, as if the strength in his arms alone can keep her next to him.

“I think I’ll stick around,” she responds, going for an offhanded reply, but they both hear what goes unspoken: _I think I’ll be staying tonight and every other night after that, if you’ll have me._

Cassian buries his face in her neck as soon as she speaks, pulling her into a hug. He smells faintly of blaster residue and sandalwood. “I’ve missed you, Jyn,” he whispers into her skin, lips brushing her neck faintly. “I’ve missed you so much.”

Her fingers bunch in the back of his parka, twining around the fabric. “Me too,” she replies, her voice cracking. There’s tears in her eyes but it doesn’t matter, not when Cassian can’t see her face. “I’ve missed being home.”

He lets out a ragged breath and tries to curl tighter against her. To both of them, it seems, home isn’t a place.

It’s a person.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hopefully the hurt/comfort in this chapter makes up for all of the angst in the last one!
> 
> thank you to everyone for reading!


	9. Chapter 9

_This time, he's not the one who falls from the tower. It’s Jyn._

_They’re both clinging to the data tower on Scarif, fingers white with exertion as they desperately try to get to the top while all of their friends die on the beach below them. Jyn looks down at him every so often, as if to check if he’s still there, and all he can offer back is a determined glance and a small nod._  

 _He knows what’s coming next, when the doors swing open above them and Krennic and his soldiers look down on their position. This isn’t the first time that he’s shot down by the Empire, forced to watch Jyn climb on alone. He shouts a warning, unclips his blaster and starts shooting, but so does Krennic. Blaster bolts fly all around them but they’re both trying to get to the top of the tower to transmit the plans that the Rebellion needs._  

_Cassian braces himself when he reaches a certain spot, waiting for the bolt to his shoulder that will send him falling down into the abyss. He’s never climbed higher than this with Jyn at his side, either on Scarif or in his dreams. He wonders, absently, what would have happened if they both reached the top at the same time._

_But the pain he so used to feeling doesn’t come._

_Instead, there’s a muffled gasp of agony from above him._

_His eyes fly open as he watches Jyn fall, lurching forward to try and grab her, but his fingers skim the hem of her shirt and he can’t get a hold of her._

_“Jyn, no!”_

_His yell echoes through the room as Krennic turns away, smirking, watching the data fall with her as her body strikes a beam, then hits the ground hard. She doesn’t move, after, and Cassian almost slips due to the amount of sweat on his hands. He swears in Festian, then starts climbing down after her, watching Krennic walk away out of the corner of his eye. He wonders if Krennic is going to come back for him, but why would a high-ranking Imperial officer dirty his hands twice?_

_Still, he waits for the pain as he descents, and is only mildly relieved when Krennic doesn’t show his face again. A small part of him reminds him that he was the one that was supposed to be shot, and the ache of that truth stings just as badly as a blaster bolt would._

_As soon as he’s able to, he jumps down, careful not to land too close to her body. When his feet touch the ground he’s at her side immediately, scanning for injuries before he even tries to move her._

_“Jyn,” he tries, kneeling down next her. His hands hover over her prone form, not wanting to make any of her injuries worse than they are. “Jyn, can you hear me?”_

_No response. With sickening clarity, he sees how her neck is bent at an angle that it shouldn’t be. His stomach lurches, his small breakfast threatening to come back up again. Against his better judgement, he touches her hand. It’s cold and–almost corpse-like._

_No._

_No no no no no no. It was supposed to be him. He was supposed to be the one who fell. He should be the one lying here with a broken neck, not Jyn._

_She shouldn’t be dead. It should have been him._

“Cassian? Are you okay?”

Jyn’s touch startles him back into consciousness. He lurches upwards, a cold sweat breaking out his forehead, with his breath coming way too fast to be normal. He puts his face in his hand, the spot where Jyn touched his shoulder burning his skin through his thin sleep shirt.

“Cassian?”

The sheets rustle but he still doesn’t look up. It’s only when her hand touches his arm again is he broken out of his reverie. “I’m okay,” he says hoarsely, snapping back into reality. He moves his hands away from his face, gives her a strained smile. Even in the dim lighting of his bedroom, he can tell she’s not convinced by his false airs of normalcy. “It’s fine, Jyn.”

She shifts, pushing herself up on her knees so their eyes are at the same level. “You’re not,” she says firmly, leaving no room for argument. “What’s wrong?”

His stomach lurches, and he turns his head away from her. It’s embarrassing for her to see him like this, when she’s suffered so much more than he has in the past couple weeks and yet here she is comforting him. “You should go back to sleep. It’s late.”

“Nightmares?” she asks softly, all too understanding. Her hand hovers above his shoulder, still uncertain about the boundaries between them now that they’re–together. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“I– _no._ I can’t,” he manages, clenching his hands to try and stop the shaking. “I’m sorry–I’m sorry for waking you.”

“Don’t be,” she says simply, leaning over to flip the lights on. When he lets out a shaky exhale, she moves back to his side. “It’s fine, Cassian.”

It’s not, and he knows it, but he doesn’t say anything else, simply content to sit beside her for a few minutes. She has his clothes on–a thin sleep shirt and a too-large pair of pants, and he doesn’t think he’s ever seen her look so beautiful.

Jyn pulls her knees up to her chest and wraps her arms around herself to keep herself warm. Goosebumps ripple across her exposed skin. He’s about to corral her back underneath the covers when she opens her mouth and speaks. “You know what I was planning on doing in Coruscant?”

She’s not looking at him, instead staring at an indeterminable place on the floor. He waits for a beat for her to continue, then says gently, “What, Jyn?”

Her grip tightens around her legs, with her nails digging into the flesh of her arms. “I was going to kill someone,” she says heavily, letting her shoulders sag. “The man in white who shot you. You remember him?" 

Cassian doesn’t know how he could forget, having seen the man’s face in his dreams only a couple of minutes ago. Still, the change in conversation unsettles him slightly. “I do.”

“That man killed my mother in front of me,” she whispers, bowing her head and letting her forehead touch her knees. “He was obsessed with my father, and he tortured me for weeks. So I was going to kill him once I got there.”

He hesitates before wrapping an arm around her shaking form, uncertain how she’ll react. She doesn’t lean into his embrace but doesn’t move away either. He takes that as a good sign. “I don’t know how I would have done it,” she admits. Her eyes are unfocused, darting around the room. It’s clear to him how nervous she is. “But I knew that I had to, after what he did to my parents and you. And I’m going to do it eventually. He. . .” she pauses, clenches her jaw, “I need to be the one who kills him.” 

The lack of inflection in her voice startles him, so he tugs her closer to him. “Why are you telling me this, Jyn?” No judgement, only curiosity.

Jyn shrugs. “I don’t know. I thought you should know–especially if we’re doing this. This relationship thing. I. . .” she pauses, then turns her head to look at him. He’s taken slightly aback by the intensity in her gaze. ”I wanted to be honest with you. So if you want to–if you want to leave or something, I’d understand–”

“I’m not going to leave,” he says immediately. “I told you to trust me, remember? You wanting to kill someone that hurt you. . .” He presses a small kiss to her forehead. “It’s fine, Jyn. I understand.”

_(revenge is an idea he’s very familiar with.)_

But killing Krennic won’t help her heal. He knows this from experience. It will only make her bitter and empty, and it won’t give her peace. Killing him won’t bring her family back or take away the scar on his shoulder or the trauma from her memories. It will only end with an Imperial officer being dead, and Jyn with more blood on her hands. He doesn’t want her to be even more troubled than she is now.

 _(though that’s not necessarily a bad thing, especially in the middle of a war.)_  

She’ll still be haunted, regardless of what she does. But instead of voicing that opinion, because it’s not what she needs to hear right now, he offers, “I dreamt that you fell.”

“On Scarif?” 

He swallows the lump in his throat. Trust goes both ways, right? “Yeah. Krennic shot you instead of me–and you fell. And then. . .then you didn’t get back up.” 

She untangles herself from his arms to look at him better. There’s no pity on her face, just a sad understanding. “Oh, Cass.”

“It scared me,” he admits, in a rare show of honestly. All of the sudden, he needs to know that she’s here. That she’s really in front of him, alive and well. So he reaches a hand up to cup her face, rubbing his thumb over her cheekbones. The feeling of her skin underneath his hand grounds him. “Losing you. . .it scared me. I. . .”

He can’t finish, but she doesn’t need him too. She understands him, reaching forward to wrap him in a tight hug. He clings to her like a lifeline, closing his eyes and taking deep breaths, trying to control his racing mind. 

“We’re going to be okay, Cassian,” she murmurs into his shirt. “Me and you. We’re going to be okay.”

He’s the one who pulls away, whispering into the crook of her neck, “You should get back to bed. You’re freezing.” 

“What about you?” 

“I’m not sure I’ll get much sleep,” he admits, watching her crawl back underneath the blankets. He offers her a small smile. “I’m going to try and get some work done.”

“You work too much,” she mumbles, her eyes half-lidded with sleep. He watches as her hands curl underneath the pillow. “At least lay next to me.”

“All right.” He grabs his datapad off of the desk and flips the lights back off. He climbs back into bed, propping himself up against the wall and letting the pad sit on his lap. It takes a few minutes, but Jyn eventually works her way next to him, placing her head on his lap and sighing contentedly. In the glow of his work, he can make out the soft smile on her face as he runs his fingers through her hair with his free hand.

 

The morning comes all too quickly. Neither of them had gotten much sleep last night, but she hadn’t minded, especially now that it feels as if a weight has been lifted off of her shoulders. Her only regret, she thinks as Cassian untangles himself from her, is that she can’t spend more time in bed with him.

“I’ll be back in a couple of hours,” Cassian tells her, slightly apologetic, as he changes into his uniform. She stretches her arms over her head leisurely and watches him without shame. When he catches her gaze, he only flushes, ducking his head. “We can get lunch together, if you’d like?”

She hears the unspoken: _If you’ll still be here._

“Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” Jyn replies lazily. His shirt rides up on her stomach ever so slightly, and she smirks when she catches him looking at the small strip of skin. He looks away, but she doesn’t miss how his tongue darts out to wet his lips. “I think I’m going to take advantage of your private ‘fresher while you’re gone.” 

He huffs out a laugh at that. “That’s the only reason you’re here, right?”

“Mhmm, I can think of a few others. I can’t remember the last time I’ve slept in a _bed._ ”

She rolls over and smushes her face in his pillows to prove her point. She can hear him laughing softly behind her, which makes her grin into the fabric. A warm feeling pools in the bottom of her stomach.

 There’s a pause, before Cassian leans over to kiss the crown of her head. She doesn’t move, in fear that she’ll scare him off. “I’ll see you later, Jyn.”

When she hears the door open and then close, she lets out a breath she hadn’t realized she had been holding. It takes her a few minutes to get out of bed–it’s been awhile since she’s felt so comfortable–but when she does, there’s a smile on her face that she can’t seem to get rid of for the rest of the morning.

 

“Major Andor, are you listening?” 

Cassian startles at the sound of Draven’s voice, pulling him out of his thoughts. He had been thinking about Jyn again, worrying that she would try to leave Hoth while he was stuck in meetings for the morning. While she had looked perfectly content in one of his shirts when he had left her a couple hours ago, he didn’t want her to leave without saying goodbye.

( _he didn’t want her to leave at all, but it’s her choice and he’ll respect it regardless of how he feels._ )

She had told him yesterday to trust her, and he does, really, so he pushes all thoughts of Jyn sneaking off of Hoth without his knowledge to the back of his mind and focuses on what Draven has to say.

“Yes, sir,” he replies, straightening his slightly slumped shoulders. “You were talking about a potential rebel cell on Bespin, sir.” It’s not a topic he should have spaced out on, especially since he’s been promoted.

“Hmph,” Draven replies, narrowing his eyebrows slightly. Cassian blinks, trying to refocus his mind back on the Rebellion. It’s been a long time since something has distracted as badly as Jyn has, but he finds, strangely, that he doesn’t mind.

( _he should. he knows he should because the rebellion comes first, it always has. but–_

 _it’s jyn._ )

The briefing continues in a very similar fashion, with Draven droning on about rebels and Cassian trying not to think about Jyn in his clothes or Jyn sleeping in his bed or Jyn–

“We’ve recently lost an operative on a Star Destroyer,” Draven says, drumming his fingers against his desk. That snaps Cassian back into attention. “If you’re up to it, we could use you on a recruiting mission or two. Nothing too strenuous, and the medics would have to clear you beforehand, but I think it would be manageable.”

“Who was it?” he asks cautiously, hands fidgeting behind his back. There’s a sinking feeling in his gut. He thinks he already knows.

“Private Cado Dravvad. Young kid from Coruscant. It’s a shame, but he knew what he was getting into. We told our agent posted there to take care of him, but he was killed before they could get to him.” 

His nails dig into his palms. “You had an agent on that Star Destroyer, sir?”

“You’re asking because Erso was on that same ship,” Draven responds wryly. “We didn’t realize she was there until Krennic killed Dravvad in front of her. A high priority prisoner like her is kept locked away from anyone except for the most high-ranking interrogators.” 

“So you knew,” Cassian responds blankly, clenching and unclenching his fists. He hears his voice, but it barely registers. “You knew that she was on that ship and you did nothing.”

“Erso is not a part of the Rebellion,” he says evenly. “She went rogue and got herself captured.”

“And if it had been me? If I had been the one who had gotten captured on Scarif?”

“You know what we do to Intelligence officers who get captured, Cassian,” Draven responds gently. Cassian clenches his jaw and looks away. “I’m sorry, but there wasn’t anything we could do for her.” 

Nothing they could do? They could have at least told him. He would have gone rogue again to rescue her, broken back and all.

_(he’d break it again if it meant he could keep jyn safe.)_

But by Draven’s steady gaze, Cassian knows Draven knows this. There’s something akin to sympathy or pity or something–Force, he doesn’t _know_ –in the general eyes, and Cassian knows why no one told him. He knows why he was kept in the dark for the whole situation and he hates it, yet there’s a small part of him that understands.

_(because why would the rebellion lose one of their best operatives for a criminal?)_

“Permission to be excused, sir,” he says through gritted teeth. He needs to do–something. Go and talk to Jyn or. Something. He doesn’t know what he needs to do, but he does know that he needs to get out of there. And breathe. He releases a ragged breath. He should probably be breathing, but it’s hard to focus on anything except the sound of his blood pounding in his ears.

“Granted,” Draven says, looking over Cassian with a cool appraisal. Perhaps he’s wondering what the hell happened to his best spy. Perhaps he’s upset or worried or resigned, but whatever it is, Cassian doesn’t give a shit. Then Draven slides the datapad he had been looking at across the table. “Here. You might be interested in this.” 

“What is it?” His fingers itch, but he doesn’t move to take it. 

“A recent update from the operative on the Star Destroyer, regarding an Imperial officer named Orson Krennic. I believe you are familiar with you?” 

Cassian snatches the file off of the table and skims the contents. His stomach lurches. “Force,” he breathes, looking up at Draven, who’s nodding grimly. “This is. . .?”

“Take it,” Draven says, voice firm. “Show Erso. I know she’s in your room.” As Cassian turns to leave, the general adds, “I’m sorry, Cassian.”

He hears what goes unspoken: _I’m sorry for the orders on Eadu and what happened on Scarif. I’m sorry about your back and your leg, and that you can barely go back out into the field again. I’m sorry about what happened on Dantooine. I’m sorry about Erso and now I’m sorry about this._

 _I'm sorry for everything, Cassian._  

It’s hard being the head of Intelligence; Cassian knows this. He can practically see the burden weighing down Draven’s shoulders. Still, it’s hard to forgive him in the heat of the movement, so Cassian turns on his heel and leaves the room without another word.

 

**_[Intelligence Analysis Report #810394: FULCRUM, CORUSCANT]_ **

_._

_._

_. . .Gathered in the main atrium of the base as per Vader’s orders. Lots of Imperial brass all lined up in the front, Vader in the middle. The rest of us were standing at attention facing them. Seemed like some sort of medal ceremony, at least that’s what most of us thought. It’s not like Vader to show his face in front of his troops very often, so we’re all on edge. Something is different._  

_A commanding officer addresses the crowd. Congratulates us on small, unimportant victories against the rebels, presumably to raise spirits. After he’s done, Vader walks to the front. Looks at us for a few moments, lets us wallow in the uncomfortable silence. The ‘trooper next to me starts fidgeting._

_Then he raises a fist and Orson Krennic, dressed all in white and standing behind him, reaches up to his throat. Choked sounds emerge from his throat and he falls to his knees. Vader’s talking the whole time, making an example out of him. He tells us that not only is Krennic responsible for the destruction of the Death Star but for letting an important prisoner (presumably Erso) escape on the way to Coruscant._

_Vader keeps Krennic alive long enough to hear the end of the speech, then kills him on stage. Tells us that any other rebel sympathizers will have the same fate and leaves. We’re dismissed and sent back to the barracks. The rest of the day. . ._

_[. . .CONTINUE READING?]_

 

When the door opens, Jyn’s rubbing a towel over her wet hair, trying to dry it before cold freezes it. She’s wearing another set of Cassian’s clothes that are way too big on her–the shirt keeps sliding off of her shoulders and the pants need to be folded over four times at the top to stay on her hips. She avoids looking at the mirror in the bathroom, however, not wanting to see how her collar bone pops out against her skin or how her cheeks are hollowed after weeks of malnutrition and starvation.

_(weeks in the medbay couldn’t heal all of the physical damage. it certainly didn’t heal any of the mental trauma either.)_

Despite this, as soon as someone enters the room, she’s darting across the room to grab a blaster she found in her investigation of Cassian’s room. It seems that he’s as paranoid as she is–it had been wedged in between the bedside table and the wall, easily accessible to grab in the middle of the night. She whips around, blaster in her hands and aimed at the intruder. She can only imagine what she looks like–wet hair dripping down her back and too big clothing hanging over her basically skeletal body.

“Just me,” Cassian says, holding his hands up. He looks wary, but not overly afraid. “It’s just me, Jyn.”

“ _Shavit_ –sorry,” she breathes, setting down the blaster back on the table. Her hands are shaking, so she tries to hide it by wrapping them around her body. “I wouldn’t have–I thought you were supposed to be back later.”

It’s only then she notices the datapad in his hands, and the uncomfortable way he’s holding it in his arms. “What’s wrong? Did something happen with Draven?” 

“I–” he shakes his head and holds out the file to her. She takes it hesitantly. “Just read it, Jyn. I’m sorry, I didn’t know any of this or I _swear_ I would have told you.” 

The way he’s looking at her has her shifting awkwardly. “I don’t. . .”

She reads it.

For a moment, she’s not sure what she’s reading. Her heartbeat speeds up, blood roaring in her ears. She glances upward at Cassian, whose eyes are filled with sympathy. “This isn’t–” she tries, skimming it over again to try and collect her thoughts. “This can’t be–”

“I’m sorry, Jyn,” he takes an uncertain step forward. She steps back, shaking her head, and he stops in his tracks. “If I had known–”

“They knew I was there?” she asks hoarsely, looking up at him. At his nod, her free hand flies up to her throat. “And–Krennic. He’s dead. And I. . .”

It had only been a couple of hours ago when she had talked about her plans to kill him and now that opportunity’s been taken away from her. The datapad falls from her fingers but it doesn’t even register in her mind when it clatters against the floor.

“Jyn. . ." 

“I was trapped on that ship for weeks,” she mutters, not really talking to Cassian. Her fingers flex into a fist and her lungs constrict. “I was supposed to be the one to kill him. After what he did to me–and my family–and now I can’t even _do_ anything to him. . .”

It’s not fair. It’s not fucking fair.

Cassian reaches an arm out to her, presumably to steady her, but she turns away from him. “Take a deep breath,” he urges, looking as helpless as she feels. “You need to breathe, Jyn.”

“I need to go,” she says instead, pushing past him and out into the hallway. “I–I need to–” she sends an apologetic glance toward Cassian, who’s gripping the doorway with one hand and looking at her as if he’ll never see her again. “I’m not running. I just–”

He nods. “You need space. I get it.”

“I’m sorry,” she whispers, hugging herself around the ribs. “I’m sorry, Cassian. I promise I'll be back.”

And with that, she flees, not looking back. She doesn't know if he believes her. In his place, she's not sure that she would. It’s been a long time since she’s ran away, but this is something she just can’t face right now.

_(if she had, she would have seen the look on cassian’s face that almost looks like he’s in mourning.)_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is an early chapter bc i'm so excited about this fic and i want to share all of it with you guys. next chapter will be up soon as well. not sure when exactly, since it's a long one, but a week at most. :-)


	10. Chapter 10

The walk down the hallway is an exercise in self-restraint.

But Jyn’s never been one to restrain herself, so just as she turns the corner and Cassian is out of sight, she slams her fists into the nearest wall and shouts in anger. A scared recruit scurries past her as she stands there, breathing heavily and blood dripping down her fingers, before she storms off down the hall.

Hoth is still a maze to her. Despite having been here for a couple weeks already, she’s spent most of her time in the medbay. But she keeps her head down as she stalks through the hall until she manages to find herself in some sort of training area.

She can work with this.

Even though gym she stumbles upon has barely enough equipment to fill the room, it’s still better than anything she’s used before. Saw had taught her to fight using empty stormtrooper armor hanging in the yard. Her eyes are drawn immediately to the punching bags in the corner, so she avoids everyone’s questioning gazes and heads over, chin raised as if inviting people to challenge her. She’s not sure if she’s relieved or disappointed when nobody does.

After some snooping, she finds some bandages to wrap her hands with. She does it absently, watching as the blood from her split knuckles soaks into the material as soon as she covers them with the wrap. It stings, but she pushes the pain to the back of her mind, and ignores how her blood is already covering the floor.

_drip. drip. drip._

It doesn’t matter. Nothing does. Krennic’s dead. Her family is dead. Rogue One is dead. And here she is, alive. Why the hell should she get to live? Who made that decision?

_(she deserves the pain. she deserves the sting in her knuckles and the ache in her heart because she’s alive and no one else is and that’s not fair, not with everything she’s done and everything she’s said.)_

She lashes out at the punching bag with her good hand, relishing the way it hurts on impact and the resounding _smack_ that echoes throughout the room. She clenches her jaw and grits her teeth so hard her bones ache, then strikes it again. And again. And again.

Her vision tunnels, only focusing on the bag in front of her and where her fists are striking. Her breath comes in short pants and sweat beads on her forehead, but she only keeps going. The pain fades to the back of her mind; she can feel the warmth of blood dripping down her arms and she considers stopping to rewrap her hands, but decides against it. It doesn’t matter.

Jyn punches the bag again, sending it flying forward.

The Rebellion knew about her on the Star Destroyer. They knew and they did _nothing._ Knowing that they could have prevented her being tortured nearly knocks the breath of out her lungs. There’s a part of her–the part of her that’s still Saw’s best soldier–that knows the Alliance had no reason to come for her. She’s not one of their soldiers, and it would have been a suicide mission to rescue her. But they left her there and she had been _tortured_ and now?

Now she can’t even have her revenge.

She hits the bag again. And again. And again.

That’d been the only thought that had got her through her time spent on that ship: the inevitability of her revenge. He’d torture her, and she’d think about killing him. And now he’s dead, at the hands of the Empire, and that’s not fair because _she_ was supposed to kill him. Not Vader, not some soldier, not his precious Death Star that her father had given his life to both build and destroy.

_Force._

Jyn slams her fist in the punching bag again with a muffled yell, biting down on her lip so hard she draws blood. Something in her hand cracks at impact, and she jumps back, cradling her it to her chest. She hisses out a shaky breath, flexing her fingers weakly. Nothing’s broken–just. She should probably rewrap her hands.

_(she won’t.)_

She leans up against the wall, letting the cold seep in through her sweat-stained clothes. As she rips the bandages with her teeth, she watches the rest of the soldiers in the gym. There’s a group of recruits training a few feet away from her, and she can’t help but scoff at the methods the instructor is using to “train” his students.

She can barely believe her eyes. Maybe she lucked out in having Saw as a teacher–at least he knew how to teach fighting, even if he had been teaching an eight-year-old girl how to kill stormtroopers.

Later, when her thoughts are more organized and when her skin isn’t bleeding any longer, she’ll tell herself that she intervened because she wants to take her anger out on something other than an inanimate object. She has no reason to care about these kids–she has plenty of her own problems to deal with right now.

_(but in the heat of the moment, all she wants to do is teach these kids something they can use against the empire, just so they’re not nameless soldiers getting shot down by waves and waves of imperial soldiers.)_

There’s sweat running down her face and blood on her hands as she stalks over to their training ring. Some of the recruits chat nervously between each other as she appraises them, likely knowing who she is and what she’s done, but she doesn’t speak until the instructor finishes with his current match.

The instructor turns to her. He’s a much bigger man and is clearly sizing her up, but Jyn doesn’t let her intimidate her. “Can I help you?”

“Just looking,” she replies airily, nodding at the group of recruits standing behind him.

He scowls but lets her stay, jerks his chin at the Twi’lek who has to spar with him next. “Let’s go, Ma’allyn.”

The girl approaches the mat hesitantly, and Jyn opens her mouth before the match can begin. She can’t help herself. “Sorry, but I just didn’t realize that the Alliance was teaching their soldiers how to die now.”

“I thought you were just watching,” the man practically snarls. “Who the hell are you to question by teaching methods?”

“Jyn Erso,” she responds smartly, raising her eyebrows. “It’s not like I stole the Death Star plans or anything.”

He scoffs. “I know who you are. I was there when you tried to convince the Council to go to Scarif. How’d that go for you?”

“The Death Star got destroyed, didn’t it?”

The man shifts his weight to his other foot, crossing his arms. “As far as I’m concerned, you’re not a member of the Rebellion. So leave us soldiers to our work, hmm? I think there’s a punching bag in the corner with your name on it. Oh, wait. Looks like you,” he sends a pointed glare down at her hands, which have definitely seen better days, “have already killed it.”

“You’re a shitty teacher,” Jyn argues instead, ignoring his attempt at a cheap insult. “You can’t teach them the same fighting techniques you use because what works for you might not work for all of them.”

“I used to work for the Empire, and I trained some of their most elite forces. That means I know what I’m doing. Back off, Imp.”

“Yeah, and I bet you only ever taught humans, right? Sorry, but you’re with the Rebellion now, and that doesn’t work for everyone. Half of these kids don’t fit that description, you absolute moof milker.”

“They’re not kids,” he snaps. “They’re soldiers. And I’m not getting any complaints from them, so why don’t you let me get my work done and stay quiet, yeah?”

She raises her hands up in mock-surrender. “All right. Let’s see it, _sir."_

He motions for the Twi’lek to come forward on the mat. The girl sends a hesitant look towards Jyn before sinking into what Jyn assumes is supposed to be a fighting stance. It mirrors the same position that the instructor is in, so Jyn interrupts before any of the actual sparring can begin.

_(she tells herself she doesn’t actually care about these kids. she’s just–she’s just looking for a fight right now.)_

“You’re not going to win standing like that,” she cuts in, turning to face the girl. “Spread your feet wider, bend your knees. There you go. Your center of gravity is your hips,” she jerks her thumb at the instructor, “his is not.” Jyn steps back, eyes searching, taking in the situation. “He’s a lot bigger than you, so use your small size as an advantage. Relax your shoulders, lower your fists a little. You’re not going to be able to hit as hard as he can, so don’t waste your strength trying to knock him out with a single punch.”

The Twi’lek girl takes her advice, standing slightly more confidently now that Jyn has instructed her correctly. Her teacher meets Jyn’s self-satisfied smirk with a glare. “You think you can teach better than I can?”

“I know I can.”

“All right,” he says with a shrug, beckoning her forward with a careless wave of his hand, as if she’s barely worth his time. “Let’s go. You beat me, you teach the class. I beat you, you get the hell out of here and let me do my damn job.”

And this is exactly what she came here looking for. With all the thoughts racing through her mind right now, she’s not going to turn him down. For a moment, his face morphs into Krennic’s, and she grins, slightly predatory. This man isn’t an Imperial officer any longer, but she’s perfectly fine with beating the crap out of him.

_(she can’t have her revenge. this doesn’t even come close to not being able to kill krennic. but this–this is a start._

_if she can stop just one of these kids from going to the same thing she did by teaching them properly, well, then maybe there’s a place for her in this rebellion.)_

She steps into the ring and sinks into her fighting stance, one similar to the one she showed the girl earlier. Her knuckles are battered and her arms ache when she holds her fists up, but her blood thrums in her veins and her mind focuses solely on her target.

“Watch and learn,” she mutters, shooting her audience a wink before lunging toward her opponent without warning.

The fight is over quicker than she would have hoped, but it’s to be expected. When she moves forward, he does as well, trying to knock her off-balance with a smart right-hook. Jyn ducks underneath his arm and slides to the side. As he recovers from the momentum of the punch, she brings her leg up and knees him, hard, in the groin.

The man folds over himself with a gasp of pain. She braces her arms together and hits him square in the back, knocking him to the ground. It only takes her a few more seconds to have him flat on his back, with her fingers in the shape of a blaster and pressed to his forehead, and with her legs straddling his hips to keep him down.

“Bang,” she says, pretending to fire. “I win.”

His face is red and he squirms underneath her hold. She rolls to the side to let him up, dancing deftly to her feet, and holds out a hand to help him up. He bats that away with a growl. “You cheated,” he manages, still breathing heavily. He braces his arms on his knees and tries to catch his breath. She notes, with more than some satisfaction, that he’s still trying to protect himself from her. “That was a dirty move.”

“You think a ‘trooper is going to play fairly in the middle of a firefight?” she shoots back, crossing her arms. “You need to take every chance you get, every opportunity that presents itself, if you want to survive. The Empire will be doing the same.”

He brushes off his hands on his pants, backing away and motioning for her to take his spot on the mat. “You’ve got the class,” he tells her, leaving the gym like a child having a tantrum. “But don’t think I won’t be telling anyone about this, Erso.”

She lets out a breath, shaking her head. Like that’ll do anything. She’s not officially a part of the Rebellion, and even if she were, Draven hates her enough already. She calls out after him, “And let them know exactly where I got you!”

That only serves to move him forward, and Jyn turns to what is now her class. She stretches her arms over her head, relishing the feeling of how her spine pops with the movement. Some of the kids are flinching away from her, but others seem to be sizing her up, trying to gauge how they can beat her in a fight. “So,” she says, baring her teeth, “who’s next?”

_(saw would be proud of her, she thinks.)_

 

Cassian goes to the mess for lunch by himself, even though he had promised to go with Jyn. A part of him hopes that she’ll meet him there, but he knows better to think that she’ll get over her anger in such a short time. She’ll come when she’s ready. He trusts her.

_(trust goes both ways. she said she wasn’t running, so he believes her. it’s the least he can do.)_

He doesn’t blame her for wanting to get away. The whole business with Krennic has him gripping his cup of caf so tightly it almost spills out and over his fingers. He lets out a breath, trying to ease some of the tension out of his shoulders. It’s not his battle to fight, but Force–he _really_ wants to punch something on her behalf. Or someone. If Krennic wasn’t dead, hell, he’d go to Coruscant himself and shoot the man right between the eyes.

_(he’d take jyn with him, but he’d make sure that he’d be the one to pull the trigger. she’s got enough blood on her hands already.)_

“Major Andor?”

He lifts his head up to meet her gaze and salutes her informally with his cup. “Lieutenant Halos. Good to see you up on your feet again.”

“Nothing bacta won’t fix,” she says, rolling her shoulder. She pauses, then adds, “You heard about the promotion, then, sir.”

“I did,” he smiles, setting down the cup down on the table and motioning for her to take the free seat across from him. “Congratulations.”

“Same to you,” she replies, sitting down. “I heard–Draven told me you were the one to thank for this. So I wanted to thank you.”

He leans back in his chair, subtly stretching out his leg underneath the table. “You deserved it. I only told him the truth.”

“I’m an Imperial defector who got recognized and panicked,” she says. “You could have told him that instead.”

“Both of those things are true, and I told him just that,” he agrees mildly, then adds, “but you also think quickly on your feet, adapt well to unplanned situations, and managed to get the data out regardless.”

“I. . .” she ducks her head, flushing. She’s clearly unused to praise. “Thank you, sir.”

“Like I said: you deserved it.”

He grabs his cup to take another sip. They sit in companionable silence for a beat, before she pushes back her chair and stands, “I’m shipping out today. An undercover mission on a planet in the Outer Rim. General Draven told me that’s what you recommended me for.”

“I did,” he agrees. “Good luck out there, Lieutenant.”

“You too, sir,” she smiles, giving him a casual salute he never would have expected to see from her. “I’ll see you around.”

With that, she turns on her heel and leaves. He watches her go with a sad, small smile, and hopes that he’ll see her again.

_(but he knows, deep down, that the chances of that are low.)_

Before he can dwell too long on it, Jyn flops down in the seat across from it. He startles slightly at the sight of her. “Jyn.”

“Hey, Cassian,” she says, reaching over to grab his plate and slide it in her direction. “You mind?”

He’s dumbfounded from the drastic changes in her behavior. “Uh, yeah, no, that’s fine–” he blinks. There’s blood on her hands and a bruise blossoming around her eye, but she doesn’t seem to care. “Jyn, are you all right?”

“I’m still so kriffing angry, if that’s what you’re asking,” she replies, spearing a piece of fruit off of his plate rather viciously and popping it into her mouth. “But I worked some of it out.”

“I can see that,” he observes drily, reaching for her hands across the table. She pulls back, scowling, and settles them in her lap. “Jyn. Let me see.”

“I’m fine.”

“Bantha shit.”

She rolls her eyes, but gives him her hands all the same. Her knuckles are split and bloody, and she flinches when he runs his thumbs over the broken skin. “Did you get into a fight?”

“Actually, I did,” Jyn responds wryly. “I might have killed one of your punching bags. And then I might have, you know, taken over a class of recruits. By sparring with their teacher in front of them.”

His mouth drops. It’s so rare that something surprises him anymore, but he can’t help it. “You did _what?”_

She fidgets in her chair. “He was teaching them wrong,” she says offhandedly, like it’s no big deal. “So I took over and taught them how to fight properly.”

Stars, he can’t help himself, but he laughs. She reels back, an offended look on her face, but he holds out a hand to stop her. “Stop, Jyn–no, I’m not laughing at you. I’m just surprised, is all.”

Jyn sits back in her chair, but her movements are uncertain. She tucks a piece of hair behind her ear. “Well–there’s something else I should tell you, then. Two things, actually. I’m staying. With the Alliance. I just got back from Mothma’s office.”

“You are? Jyn, that’s great! What made you change your mind?”

“The kids,” she admits, looking down at the table. “I think I could do some real good here, teaching them what I know. That nerfherder instructing them before me was teaching them how to be cannon fodder. Mothma said I could work with the new recruits until I’m cleared for active duty,” she bites her lips, and looks up at him. “Is this–are you okay with this? With me sticking around?”

“I couldn’t be happier,” he answers truthfully, a smiling nearly splitting his face in two. He reaches over to tug her chair closer to his so he can kiss the crown of her head, then pulls her in for a hug. She tucks her face into his shoulder, clearly pleased with his response. “I’m proud of you, Jyn.”

And he is. He really is. Not only has she decided to stay with the Alliance, she’s found a purpose here too. He didn’t want to be the only reason keeping here on Hoth, so he’s beyond ecstatic that she’s found something else to believe in.

_(she may not ever be as involved as he is in the rebellion, but she’s found her place here. that’s more than enough for him.)_

She laughs softly. “You won’t be saying that when you hear what else happened.”

She pulls out a crumpled piece of paper from her pocket and slides it across the table to him. He skims the first line, then chuckles. “Congratulations on your first suspension, Recruit Erso.”

“He had it coming,” she replies grouchily, taking the paper back from him. “I think I’m going to frame it and mount it on my wall. What do you say, Captain?”

“It’s Major Andor, now, actually,” he corrects with a mischievous spark in his eyes. “I got promoted yesterday.”

Her hand flies to her neck nervously, and she drops her gaze, almost as if she’s worried that she shouldn’t be talking to him. That’s not the reaction he had been expecting, especially not from the earlier mood of the conversation. Cassian frowns, and leans forward. “Jyn? What is it?”

“It’s not–” she laughs slightly, drops her hand. Cassian watches it fall to her lap. “It’s silly.”

“Your feelings aren’t silly,” he says pointedly. It pains him to hear her talk like this, like nothing she says has any importance. How many times has she been told to shut up and sit down? That she’s not a politician, but a soldier? “You can tell me.”

She shrugs, shifting in her seat. “You’re all–high-ranking now. Are you even going to have time for a lowly recruit like me?”

Ah. He promised he’d never leave her, but there’s more than one way to abandon someone. While he had said he would always be there for her, he knows that she’s worried she’ll have to watch him from a distance, spending every waking moment working with the Rebellion.

_(he’s always devoted all of himself to the alliance and he’s always been on his own. but the situation has changed, and he’s not the same man anymore.)_

“I’ll always have time for you,” he tells her. “Me being promoted won’t change anything. It’s the two of us, all the way, remember?”

That makes her smile. “I’m glad you’re with me, Cass.”

“Me too.” He reaches across to her, and gives her hand a gentle squeeze. “Besides, we both know that you’ll be a sergeant by the end of the week.”

Jyn laughs. “Watch out, Major. I'll be coming for your position next.”

_(he wouldn’t mind that in the slightest.)_

He smiles at that, drumming his fingers on his leg as he watches her finish the rest of his meal. It’s not anything special, but it’s food. For someone who’s had to live life from one meal to the next, unsure when she’d get to eat again, this is a luxury. When she’s finished, scraping her fork against the plate to get every last crumb, he says, “Can I ask you something?”

She leans back in her seat, relaxed and open. He marvels at how unguarded she is around him. “Shoot.”

“You always touching your chest, here,” he reaches up to his neck, mirroring her earlier behavior. “And I know you had a necklace, once–I saw it on the way to Scarif. So I just. . .”

“You’re wondering what happened to it,” she guesses, and at his nod, she sighs. “Krennic took it. It was a gift from my mother. She gave it to me before. . .before she died, and I guess I’m not used to not having it.” Her hand creeps up again, but she stops herself before it reaches her neck. “It was comforting to hold it. It’s just–a habit.”

“I’m sorry you lost it,” he says gently, seeing the grief flash in her eyes. Losing her necklace must have felt like losing her mother all over again.

“Me too.”

He pauses. “I know this isn’t nearly the same, but,” he fumbles, then pulls out his dog tags from his pocket. He slides them across the table to her, but she doesn’t pick them up, looking at him uncertainly. “If you wanted to wear these until you got your own–I mean, you don’t have to, but I can’t go out in the field anymore so I won’t need them. I just thought–” Force, what is he doing, spluttering like an idiot? Jyn doesn’t move. “You don’t have to,” he says quickly, reaching to take them back but she swats his hand away before he can.

“Thank you,” she says, running her fingers over the engravings on the sides before slipping them over her head. The tags fall directly between her breasts, and she clasps her hand over them so tightly it seems uncomfortable. “It’s not the same but–it’s a familiar weight. It’s comforting. And. . .this,” she waves her hands in the air, “this gesture means a lot. So. Thanks, Cass.”

The sight of her wearing his dog tags brings a smile to his face and a warmth to heart that can’t be lost even in the cold of Hoth. When she smiles back at him, tentative yet unafraid, he thinks maybe, just maybe, everything is going to be okay.

 

She stops him in the hallway a couple days later, another pair of dog tags gripped tightly in her fists. “Here,” she says, pushing her own dog tags into arms. She doesn’t leave any room for him to argue with her. “I just got these today and I wanted you to have them.”

He glances down at the tags in his hands, then back at her, noticing that she’s still wearing his tags around her neck. “These are yours?”

It’s not a grand romantic gesture, trading tags. It’s hardly a declaration of love or a marriage proposal. So why does it feel so much like it is?

_(maybe this is their own special way of saying “i love you.”)_

“Yeah. You gave me yours, so I wanted to give you mine,” she replies softly. He looks at her with pure adoration as he slips her dog tags around her neck. They bask in the moment for a few beats before she has to break it. “You know, if you ever forget about me. Since you’re all high and mighty now.”

“I would never forget about you, Jyn Erso,” he says with so much sincerity it almost has her reeling backwards. Leave it to Cassian to turn her attempt of a joke to something that has her heart feeling so full that it could almost burst.

“Come on,” she says instead, elbowing him in the ribs, then dances away from him when he tries to retaliate. There’s laughter in his eyes as he watches her, a smile tugging at the corner of his lips. “You want to grab lunch?”

“Only if you eat your own food and leave mine alone,” he quips, leading her forward with his hand on the small of her back. She smiles, leaning into his embrace.

This is what she’s been searching for her entire life. And by the look on Cassian’s face, she thinks the same is true for him as well.

 

_(despite everything, there’s still happiness to be found, even for them. in the midst of krennic’s torture, she never thought she’d feel this way again. and when he had been recovering all alone, he hadn’t either._

_the truth is this: even the most broken people can be healed. even the darkest times can have light. even in the things that are the most bitter tasting, there can still be something sweet._

_and above all else, there is always a reason to survive, even if it takes some time to figure it out.)_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so we've reached the end. i cannot thank you all so much because i haven't done this all by myself. this is the first time i've written a longfic since "shoot me like a star" and it's been so much easier to do. all of your support and comments and kudos only pushed me to keep writing and create something awesome. so thank you all so so much. 
> 
> i'm not sure what my plans for the future are. i have a oneshot written for the rebelcaptain secret santa and i also have a 5+1 fic half done for my other post-scarif au. i don't know what else i have planned for this universe, but i'm sure there will be something down the line. 
> 
> thank you all again for reading, and i hope you've enjoyed the fic as much as i have


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